'I had people ready to go' – Jon Gruden gets real about how close he got to becoming the Tennessee Vols' head coach
Over the years, there's been a lot of speculation about just how close Jon Gruden got to becoming the Tennessee Vols' head coach on a couple of different occasions. Gruden's name was connected to Tennessee during the Vols' 2012 and 2017 coaching searches, leading to an influx of "Grumors" circulating on message boards and social […]
Over the years, there's been a lot of speculation about just how close Jon Gruden got to becoming the Tennessee Vols' head coach on a couple of different occasions.
Gruden's name was connected to Tennessee during the Vols' 2012 and 2017 coaching searches, leading to an influx of "Grumors" circulating on message boards and social media.
Ultimately, Gruden, who was a graduate assistant at Tennessee in the mid 1980s, never took the job and the program instead hired Butch Jones (2012) and Jeremy Pruitt (2017).
But just how close did Gruden come to actually becoming the head coach at Tennessee?
The former Super Bowl-winning head coach told Mike Keith this week on The Mike Keith Show that there were some "serious talks" and he had some assistant coaches "ready to go".
"Yeah, it did," said Gruden when asked if anything ever got real with Tennessee. "When I was doing Monday Night Football, there were some serious talks. I just wasn't ready to do college football. I was broadcasting Monday Night Football. I really felt if I had become the head coach here at Tennessee, I probably would have got in all kinds of trouble with recruiting — because I want to get all the best players.
"I wasn't ready for it. But I had talked to Peyton (Manning) and Kenny Chesney — some of my favorite Volunteers. Sometimes I look back on my life wondering what would've happened. But I stuck with the NFL, I wanted to stick in the NFL. I had a good thing going with broadcasting and unfortunately, I never pulled the trigger to get in with the Orange, but I'm still their biggest fan."
"I had people ready to go, I did," added Gruden when asked if he had started building a coaching staff. "I was eager, honestly, to be a college coach. When I got fired by Tampa, I was really ticked off as you can imagine. And I went to Oregon and I spent a few days with Chip Kelly, who really was turning a corner with the college football offense, the no huddle. It was bizarre, so I learned. And then I went to Alabama with Nick Saban, and Joe Pendry was the offensive line coach, and I got to see how it worked on two different polar opposite ends. I was preparing to be a college coach.
"But I just didn't feel like doing the grind of recruiting. I didn't see that as me. I just like to sit in the lab and scheme football and coach football. I wanted to stay closer to my wheelhouse. Some days I wonder what could've been."
In the midst of the "Grumors", Gruden would often make references to the Vols, and he even showed up in Knoxville on occasion. Keith asked Gruden if that was by design. The longtime football coach told Keith that he showed up in Knoxville simply to see his son, who was a student at UT at the time.
"I did come back and see my son at his fraternity," explained Gruden. "Took a bunch of the fraternity guys out to Ruth's Chris, right on the water, and I went to the South Carolina vs Tennessee game because we had a Monday night game in Nashville for the Titans. So I drove to Knoxville and I went to the game and everybody's like, 'Gruden's trying to get the job'. I [wasn't] trying to get the job. I was just seeing my son."
Things ended up working out just fine for the Vols as Tennessee eventually landed on Josh Heupel as the program's head coach. After more than a decade of wandering in the wilderness, it's Heupel, along with athletic director Danny White, that's finally brought stability to Tennessee football.