As every new head coach may try to do, Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt is looking to keep the doors open to the alums of the Tennessee football program. Knowing he needs to do everything he can to rejuvenate the Tennessee program, tapping into the healthy alumni base of the Vols football program is a wise strategy.
“I want as many former VFLs back as we can get,” Pruitt said, according to a spring football story from Knox News. “It’s going to take all of us to get this program back where it’s supposed to be and, I think, that everybody is willing to do that.”
Having high-profile Tennessee alums hanging around the program can be a great recruiting tool as well as a good motivator for the current players on the roster. Over the weekend, Pruitt welcomed former Vols running back Alvin Kamara to a practice. Kamara is coming off a stellar rookie season in the NFL and can immediately be used as a tool for the kind of NFL future you can have by playing football at Tennessee.
“There’s been a lot of men over the years that have worked very hard to build this program up and I get it and I want these guys to come back,” Pruitt explained. “I know the sense of pride when they come back and, I think, they like what they see from our guys.”
As other coaches have found out at other jobs, winning over the alumni from a football program is a key objective because if the alums are not on board with what the new head coach is doing, it can turn ugly pretty quickly (see Al Golden and Miami). Pruitt is cognizant of the importance of keeping the alums happy and the job that is on his hands to keep those alums enthusiastic about the current state of the program.