Why the seat could stay cool under Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruitt for a long time

John Adams
Knoxville

Coaches usually get a pass on their first season — no matter what or how much goes wrong. But the grace period for second-year Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruitt likely will last much longer than one year.

Recent history is in his favor.

Tennessee has had five different coaches since 2007. It has had more coaches than it has had winning seasons since then in the past 11 seasons.

That’s reason enough for UT to be patient with Pruitt. Suppose things go terribly wrong, and the Vols duplicate last season’s 5-7 record. The outcry wouldn’t be as loud as when Derek Dooley suffered back-to-back losing seasons in his first two years on the job.

Tennessee has no choice but to give Pruitt time to build a program. After all, it’s not as though the Vols are going to offer Urban Meyer $12 million a year to return to coaching. Southern Cal should take care of that.

But Pruitt isn’t the only SEC coach who is a long way from the proverbial hot seat. In fact, hot-seat coaches are surprisingly hard to find this preseason in the SEC.

Auburn’s Gus Malzahn is the best candidate — even though the cost of his buyout could support a third-world country for a year.

The next best candidate would be Ole Miss coach Matt Luke, who has lost 12 of 16 SEC games in two seasons after replacing Hugh Freeze. However, you can’t judge his record on face value because the Rebels have been hamstrung by NCAA probation.

Tennessee Head Coach Jeremy Pruitt speaks with a player during Tennessee football practice at Haslam Field in Knoxville, Tennessee on Saturday, August 10, 2019.

His background is in his favor. He’s a Mississippi native who played for Ole Miss and has a history with the Rebels as an assistant coach. The school might be a little slower to fire one of its own.

Coaching longevity figures into the shortage of hot-seat candidates. A handful of league coaches haven’t been on the job long enough to get fired.

Texas A&M’s Jimbo Fisher, Arkansas’ Chad Morris, Florida’s Dan Mullen and Mississippi State’s Joe Moorhead are just beginning their second year on the job.

LSU’s Ed Orgeron became interim head coach early in the 2016 season. He has had only two full seasons as head coach.

Other coaches have made just enough progress to stay off the hot seat. 

Will Muschamp, who is beginning his fourth season at South Carolina, has led the Gamecocks to three consecutive bowl games. Missouri’s Barry Odom, another fourth-year SEC coach, has improved the Tigers’ record in each of his seasons.

Vanderbilt coach Derek Mason’s job would be in jeopardy at most places. But Vanderbilt isn’t most places.

Although Mason hasn’t had a winning season in five years, he has taken the Commodores to bowl games in two of the past three seasons. Moreover, he has won three of five games against Tennessee.

Kentucky’s Mark Stoops is about as secure as a coach can be at Kentucky after leading the Wildcats to a rare 10-win season in 2018.

Alabama is in the middle of a dynasty under coach Nick Saban. Fourth-year coach Kirby Smart could be building a dynasty at Georgia.

While most of the conference coaches are unusually secure by SEC standards, that could change in a hurry. Former Auburn coach Gene Chizik can vouch for that.

In 2010, he led the Tigers to a 14-0, national championship season. He was fired two years later after Auburn went 3-9.

John Adams is a senior columnist. He may be reached at 865-342-6284 or john.adams@knoxnews.com. Follow him at: twitter.com/johnadamskns.