The Big Orange Caravan has wrapped up and for Josh Heupel the focus is on recruiting as official visits will start to take place and Tennessee looks to build its class. Matt and Austin have the full update in the recruiting section below.
For Heupel’s team, it again finishing the semester and the weight room in a four-week post-spring block before taking 2-3 weeks off and then starting what amounts to a seven-month grind of football season.
The Vols look to be pretty healthy as they prepare for summer work. Heupel said he continues to be impressed with the gains his players have made since January.
Arion Carter is getting closer to being back. They will be careful in his build up early in the summer, but he has recovered well to this point. Fellow linebacker Edwin Spillman is recovering from a procedure he had post spring. Spillman should be ready to in June.
Freshman Breeze Carter is recovering from a spring injury as well and will be limited during the offseason.
Many of you have asked about Chaz Coleman. Coleman continues to be around. He communicates with his teammates and regularly with Rodney Garner, but as Heupel stated at the Big Orange Caravan stop in Chattanooga, Coleman’s next step is to completely return to football.
Otherwise things are pretty routine in football right now — throwing sessions by the quarterbacks and receivers, along with speed and strength work.
The coaches are scattered all round the country recruiting. As they get ready to come off the road, it will be more tweaking things to tailor it to the personnel that they have and to what they learned of themselves coming out of spring practice.
Elsewhere, the Board of Trustees Executive committee meets on Monday, which is a rescheduled meeting from one that didn’t happen earlier in April. The meeting will cover approval for the entertainment district, which includes the G-10 garage destruction. Final approval has to come from the state building commission, which is expected.
Tennessee has spent over a year working on a parking plan for events while the campus side has been working on a plan for students. We expect more details on that play in six weeks or so.
Tennessee will officially become an adidas school on July 2. Fans can look for merchandise in stores around July 10. As for uniform reveals, there’s no planned event for that. Given Tennessee’s success in football doing those things through social media, it would make sense for sides to do it through those platforms.
Following Saturday’s Luke Combs concert the field at Neyland Stadium will be removed and it will be prepped for the Savannah Bananas game at the end of May. Then later in the summer a complete new sodding of the field will take place to get ready for the football season.