Former Tennessee Vols head coach Jeremy Pruitt was back in the headlines recently after filing a lawsuit against the NCAA that claims he lost $100 million in lost wages due to UT firing him with cause in early 2021. 

Pruitt, who went 16-19 during his three seasons as the head coach at Tennessee, was fired due to an NCAA investigation into impermissible benefits. 

"With a direct financial stake in the outcome, and in the face of a glaring conflict of interest, the NCAA empowered the University of Tennessee to use its own attorneys to investigate the University, including Pruitt, and to determine the scope of the investigation into alleged rules violations during Coach Pruitt's tenure as head coach," reads the filing. "UT had a vested interest in the pre-determined outcome of the one-sided 'investigation,' so that it could justify its failure to pay Jeremy the millions of dollars due under his buyout and other incentives stipulated in his contract." 

Sports attorney Dan Lust, the host of the Conduct Detrimental podcast, joined 104.5 The Zone's The Buck Reising Show on Thursday to discuss Pruitt's case, and he dropped a wild quote that puts Pruitt's name in the same sentence as some of the most well-known names in the history of the world. 

Lucas Panzica, Reising's partner in crime on The Buck Reising Show, pointed out that Pruitt will likely be the last coach ever that gets punished for impermissible benefits thanks to the legality of NIL deals (which can essentially be pay-for-play deals due to the preliminary injunction granted by a federal judge in Tennessee in early 2024). 

"You know, in our history, people are remembered for certain things," said Lust. "Christopher Columbus is remembered for something, Martin Luther King [Jr] is remembered for something. And if Jeremy Pruitt is remembered by being the last coach penalized for this (impermissible benefits), that's just kind of the nature of the beast. Do I think that's true? Probably."

What a quote. Panzica and Lust, though, are almost certainly right. Players are now publicly accepting millions of dollars to sign (or transfer) with a school and there's absolutely nothing the NCAA can do about it. Pruitt was the bookend to the era of college football that prohibited such activity. 

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As far as Pruitt's lawsuit goes, I sympathize with the guy. I don't know what actually happened at Tennessee, as far as Pruitt's claim that players were being paid at UT before he was hired. What I do know, though, is that Pruitt was accused of handing out around $62,000 in impermissible benefits. And because of that, he's essentially been ostracized from the sport. And I definitely don't think that's fair. College players have been getting paid, in secret, for decades. Now that's it's legal, what's the point of upholding the show cause penalty on Pruitt (and the subsequent one-year suspension he has to serve if hired by a program)? 

Pruitt struggled as a head coach at Tennessee. And the program is in a better spot now that he's gone. But I still believe he possesses one of the best defensive minds in the game. There's no doubt that had he simply been fired by Tennessee for poor performance, he'd be either a defensive coordinator or a defensive backs coach somewhere in the SEC right now. 

With that said, I don't know about Pruitt's claim about $100 million in lost wages. I think that number, at most, is probably around $10 million (assuming he would've landed a gig as one of the highest paid defensive coordinators in the sport). 

We'll see how this lawsuit plays out. But regardless of how it plays out, I think it's fair to say that Pruitt shouldn't be viewed as a villain in East Tennessee. He took a job he probably wasn't ready for when everyone else was telling Tennessee no (during a coaching search that was so managed so poorly that it got an athletic director fired). And Pruitt took that job despite the athletic department, at the time, operating with no real alignment. It was a hopeless situation from the start for the Alabama native. 

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