After nearly three years of investigation, the NCAA handed down the punishment for the infractions committed by Tennessee Football under head coach Jeremy Pruitt.
The headlining aspects of the punishment include an $8 million fine, recruiting sanctions, but, the biggest of them all, no postseason bowl ban for Tennessee moving forward.
The fine and the recruiting sanctions are certainly going to be areas to navigate around in the coming years, but Tennessee has already been headed in that direction with self-imposed sanctions. Those specific self-imposed sanctions, combined with continuous cooperation with the NCAA during the investigation, helped ensure that Tennessee’s current players and coaches will not be punished with a postseason ban for the actions of former people connected to the university.
The cooperation from Tennessee ensured the best outcome for the Vols’ program moving forward despite some of the punishments that are being handed out.
“Having the ability to have real, open dialogue with [Athletic Director] Danny [White] during the process, to have great trust in where they thought this would ultimately end up, gave me great confidence that we would be able to hit the ground running,” Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel said to Peter Burns on the Finebaum Show while discussing the opening conversations he had when taking over as the Vols’ coach in 2021. “It was going to be a speed bump for our football program when I took over but it wasn’t going to be anything that delayed our progress. People have been able to see that over the last two years.”
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Heupel mentioned during the interview that the program received a notice on Thursday evening that the investigation’s results would be announced on Friday.
“Excited that we were able to reach a great conclusion,” Heupel said. “Our administration has worked for two and a half years on finding a resolution to this. They found out about what was going on, reported it, been transparent, and we wanted to protect our athletes and make sure they have an opportunity to compete for championships and we’re able to do that. Really happy that we get a chance to put this behind us and move forward now.”
Later in the interview, Heupel mentioned that a lot of the staff and coaches are out of the building with the middle of the summer in swing. Once the punishment was officially announced, though, the staff grouped together through an online video call to discuss their next steps moving forward. Heupel, who said that he is out of town at the moment, also had a video call with the players after their morning workout to discuss much of the same topic.
Despite the hopeful optimism that is coming out of the investigation’s conclusion, there had been moments of uncertainly and tough moments around the program with the NCAA’s investigation looming over for more than two years.
“Certainly it’s in recruiting,” Heupel said about the most difficult part to navigate during the investigation. “Our players, because they’re with you every day, they’ve got a lot of trust in what you’re doing as a program, leading that program, and what you’re going to try to get accomplished. I think the hardest thing for our entire staff was in recruiting because it has nothing to do with us who are currently there. People tried to use it against us in recruiting negatively. You had to develop great trust with the recruits and their families. You talk about the culture that you’re building, talking about what happened and what you think the end result will be with the NCAA.”
“Today’s word gives us the ability to put it behind us,” Heupel continued on to say. “It’s out in the open, it’s finalized, and they can all realize we have the opportunity to go out and play for championships.”
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Josh Heupel also gave a massive amount of credit to Tennessee’s 2021 and 2022 seniors for the stability they helped create during and after the coaching transition.
“The group of seniors, last year and the year before, will have a completely different lineage, their impact inside of Tennessee Football,” Heupel said. “And I say that because there was so much uncertainty, so many guys did leave. Those guys that stayed chose to stay because they care about the Power T, they care about the guys in the locker room with them. And you look at the success and what they rebuilt in such a short amount of time, it’s certainly the pillars of our success that we’ve had and where we’re going, too. Those classes will be remembered and revered in a completely different way than so many that came before them.”
One Response
I think that UT should take issue w/the 6 year punishment resulting in loss of scholarships. UT has voluntarily reduced the numbers of scholarships they have offered the last 2 years!