The head football coach in a position like the University of Tennessee temporarily learns that he paid to be more than his degree.
This would possibly be absurd because of its influence across the state. His words are so heavy that he will begin to look like a politician: cautious, polite, completely harmless. This is the art of public relations: saying a lot and yet very small.
Phillip Fulmer a Rembrandt in this regard.
Jeremy Pruitt will be like this.
We’ve known all the time about the current Tennessee coach. You listen to the poorly used drawing and grammar, and those unfamiliar with Pruitt take it without problems like the pothole it is not.
I have discovered that Pruitt over the years is a sharp, frank, very direct and honorable coach in his and refreshingly fair with sharp criticism of anyone, adding himself.
You may not need Pruitt to criticize your assignment in a meeting room, but you can be sure you’re not looking to idiot you at the poker table or hit your golf ball on the street.
However, brutally direct can offend other people, and I think that’s Pruitt’s case. However, those who love him tend to like it a lot.
Fulmer, through all accounts, falls into this category.
This is the most productive way to diagnose Tennessee’s preference to further increase the budget in Pruitt for no other apparent reason.
Pruitt’s salary will increase from $3. 8 million to $4. 2 next year, under the terms of the extension of his two-year contract announced Thursday through college.
Contract extensions like that are exaggerated recruitment tools, but the fact that Tennessee, in the midst of a pandemic, gave Pruitt an extension and a significant increase to be between 13 and 12 years old in two mediocre seasons surprises some.
To Pruitt’s credit, it is admirable that he read the work in 2020 and necessarily rejected, or at least late, the additional $400,000. According to Fulmer, Pruitt liked to wait until 2021 to settle for the construction that obviously remarkable from the end. last season.
But for Tennessee and Fulmer, there is an additional risk: assuming that a large acquisition of Pruitt accompanies the next two years, is betting with the chimney on a climate where athletics revenue is disappearing, selling tickets with limited prices for football, and giant establishments that have to bid off and eliminate programs.
We consider that SEC schools have a lot of cash to frame the changes, but that’s not the case, it’s about to be clearer than it has been for a long time.
So why was there more systems than Tennessee chasing Pruitt after last season, which required a deal?And you announce it two days earlier than it could be an incredibly unpredictable 2020 season?
Remember how Tennessee opened its 2019 season?
Not long ago the robberies were humiliated in the state of Georgia and the hypothesis began seriously about the number of weeks of Pruitt’s work. Flights advanced significantly, but advanced at the end of the season as schedules relaxed.
As a result, more than a few seasons over the past decade have begun for Tennessee enthusiasts with a renewed sense of conviction and exaggeration, through effects or recruitment, which were temporarily unfounded.
Under Pruitt, the flights are at the same point. There are genuine reasons for hope, but they haven’t turn the corner with him either. Until that happens, Tennessee enthusiasts have each and every right to be skeptical.
The difference this time is Fulmer. Si is accepted as true with AD as skilled at anything, it’s football, and he never hesitated to help the coach who hired what Fulmer thought of as another situation.
“I’m encouraged to know where we are,” Fulmer told me in February. “Now we still have a lot of paintings to do, I mean, tons of paints to do to get where we need to be. But our young people are more physical. We’re more talented. We’ve established a culture of tenacity here on both sides of the ball.
“We’re still close to attack, but we’re much bigger than we were. I mean, we inherited a disaster.
Butch Jones is not the right coach, and Tennessee took too long to perceive.
I don’t think Tennessee has the coach in Pruitt.
But I think he’s defeating Georgia State, too.
For the extra money, pruitt is expected to be the right coach. I’m not sure I’m still comfortable with him.
Tennessee apparently doesn’t share the concern.
Contact Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean. com and Twitter @Gentry_Estes.