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It’s no secret that Butch Jones puts a lot of emphasis on recruiting. Immediately after accepting the job in Knoxville, Jones made clear his intention of improving the Vols’ roster by recruiting the best players. And it’s hard to argue with the results so far.
This past February, when the dust settled on National Signing Day, the Vols had notched one of the top five recruiting classes in the country. Fast forward seven months and Tennessee’s 2015 class is currently ranked No. 7 in the Rivals.com team rankings.
One of the reasons for his success on the recruiting trail is to Butch Jones, everything is about recruiting.
Wednesday night on Vol Calls, Bob Kesling asked about the impact of the Vols’ Sunday opener against Utah State, having a national audience all to yourself, and what that meant for the Tennessee brand.
“It’s free advertising,” Jones said. “It was a four hour commercial for the University of Tennessee.”
“That’s why every chance we get to sell Neyland Stadium out, we need to sell Neyland Stadium out. Because everything else was about recruiting. We had about 250 prospective student athletes at the game from all age brackets. So again, everything is about recruiting and the atmosphere to make individuals want to come to the University of Tennessee.”
In short: a loud, electric, standing-room only Neyland Stadium helps recruiting.
“It was a great platform for us,” Jones continued. “It was great that our players answered the call. Now, what we did last week has absolutely no bearing on this week but it was a great setting (on) national television and, like I said, the rainbows, the storms, the rain, the clouds, they couldn’t keep VolNation away and we are going to need that again Saturday.”
When asked about memorable moments when running through the T for the first time in 2014, Jones said, “The thing that I remember the most is I was holding on to the arm of Cam Sutton and he was like a caged animal. He was ripping my arm off. He couldn’t wait to run through that T and that was great to see.”
Butch Jones is doing his part.
Cam Sutton is certainly doing his.
Are you?
Let’s pack Neyland on Saturday, and make it even louder than last weekend. I’ll see you there.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]