Of all the coaches hired this century, Tennessee football has apparently made two of the worst 10 choices.
John Talty of CBS compiled his list of the worst 25 hires in the sport since 2000. For the Vols, Jeremy Pruitt and Derek Dooley made the cut, both inside the top 10. However, Butch Jones was left off the list and wasn’t even named as one of the first hires left off.
Pruitt was considered the worst Vols coach since the turn of the century in the rankings. He clocked in as the No. 7 worst hire.
“Pruitt was the end result of an embarrassing coaching search that featured a fan revolt over the expected hire (Greg Schiano), the firing of an AD (John Currie) and almost-hires (Mike Leach),” Talty wrote. “Pruitt had the SEC pedigree but quickly proved he was no Kirby Smart. His time in Knoxville not only didn’t meet expectations, but invited serious NCAA scrutiny into a program that was allegedly handing out money to player parents in fast food bags. In the end, Tennessee was found to have committed hundreds of NCAA violations and multiple coaches, including Pruitt, received multi-year show-cause penalties.
The only coaches to clock in ahead of Pruitt were Mike Price at Alabama and Michael Haywood at Pitt, who tied for first, Ellis Johnson at Southern Miss, Chad Morris at Arkansas, Charlie Weis at Kansas and Ty Willingham at Washington.
Pruitt finished his Tennessee tenure with a 5-19 record in the NCAA’s eyes after being fired with cause due to recruiting violations involving paying players. His on-the-field mark was 16-19, but included a devastating loss to Georgia State to open the 2019 season.
In his final season in 2020, he went 3-7 in the Covid year, with all seven losses coming in consecutive games in the middle of the season. This included a home loss to Kentucky among other questionable defeats.
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Dooley checks in on the list at No. 10. The coaches between him and Pruitt are Les Miles at Kansas and Ron Turner at FIU.
“Dooley had the pedigree but not the resume when Tennessee hired Vince Dooley’s son to replace Lane Kiffin,” Talty wrote. “Dooley had only made a single bowl game and had a 17-20 record at Louisiana Tech before making a jump to Knoxville that proved to be too big for him. Dooley went 3-2 against Kentucky and Vanderbilt, 0-6 against Georgia and South Carolina, finished sixth in the SEC East twice and lost 14 of his last 15 SEC games. Dooley led Tennessee to its first back-to-back losing seasons in 100 years and set the program back years.”
He finished his three-year tenure 4-19 in SEC play and 15-21 overall. Dooley’s teams got worse in every season as he went from six to five to four wins before being fired. He did not coach the final game of the 2012 season with UT pulling the plug at an 0-7 mark in SEC play and a bowl appearance well off the table.
