WoodsmanVol
It takes wisdom to understand wisdom.
- Joined
- May 12, 2010
- Messages
- 14,466
- Likes
- 10,737
The difference in mentality between Jeremy Pruitt and Butch Jones is striking
During his time at Tennessee, Jones was thrilled to get to get to nine wins and a bowl game. So when things started going south, Jones pointed to his 2015 and 2016 nine win seasons as some of the best years of Tennessee football in recent memory.
“We have a lot of great things going on right now,” Jones said in an interview with Nashville’s 104.5 The Zone. “We’re experiencing the last three years — the last two years have been some of the best years in the last 20 years of Tennessee football.”
Of course, at the time, Tennessee had won a national championship in that 20 year span, making his comments particularly laughable. Also at the time, Tennessee had just wasted a loaded roster which was fulling capable of winning the division. Jones was fired a year later after putting together the worst season in Tennessee football history.
Fast forward to Jeremy Pruitt, who is coming off of an 8-5 season in 2019 — in the midst of rebuilding from ground zero after Jones was fired. It was a huge positive development, especially after the losses to Georgia State and BYU.
Difference is, Pruitt isn’t giving anybody a chance to be satisfied.
“I would say for everybody that’s associated with Tennessee, we need to raise our expectations,” Pruitt said on Thursday night at a signing day event. “And I know everybody’s excited we went 8-5 and finished the year the right way. But we’ve got to raise our expectations as a program, as a fan base, because the people we’re competing against, they’ve been trying to kick us while we’ve been down, right? We’ve been kicked around a little bit. It’s time for us to start doing a little bit of kicking ourselves.”
The biggest difference is Butch was a salesman and Pruitt is a coach. It's so nice to have a HC that doesn't speak like a politician.
A-freakin-men!!The difference in mentality between Jeremy Pruitt and Butch Jones is striking
During his time at Tennessee, Jones was thrilled to get to get to nine wins and a bowl game. So when things started going south, Jones pointed to his 2015 and 2016 nine win seasons as some of the best years of Tennessee football in recent memory.
“We have a lot of great things going on right now,” Jones said in an interview with Nashville’s 104.5 The Zone. “We’re experiencing the last three years — the last two years have been some of the best years in the last 20 years of Tennessee football.”
Of course, at the time, Tennessee had won a national championship in that 20 year span, making his comments particularly laughable. Also at the time, Tennessee had just wasted a loaded roster which was fulling capable of winning the division. Jones was fired a year later after putting together the worst season in Tennessee football history.
Fast forward to Jeremy Pruitt, who is coming off of an 8-5 season in 2019 — in the midst of rebuilding from ground zero after Jones was fired. It was a huge positive development, especially after the losses to Georgia State and BYU.
Difference is, Pruitt isn’t giving anybody a chance to be satisfied.
“I would say for everybody that’s associated with Tennessee, we need to raise our expectations,” Pruitt said on Thursday night at a signing day event. “And I know everybody’s excited we went 8-5 and finished the year the right way. But we’ve got to raise our expectations as a program, as a fan base, because the people we’re competing against, they’ve been trying to kick us while we’ve been down, right? We’ve been kicked around a little bit. It’s time for us to start doing a little bit of kicking ourselves.”
The biggest difference is Butch was a salesman and Pruitt is a coach. It's so nice to have a HC that doesn't speak like a politician.
The difference in mentality between Jeremy Pruitt and Butch Jones is striking
During his time at Tennessee, Jones was thrilled to get to get to nine wins and a bowl game. So when things started going south, Jones pointed to his 2015 and 2016 nine win seasons as some of the best years of Tennessee football in recent memory.
“We have a lot of great things going on right now,” Jones said in an interview with Nashville’s 104.5 The Zone. “We’re experiencing the last three years — the last two years have been some of the best years in the last 20 years of Tennessee football.”
Of course, at the time, Tennessee had won a national championship in that 20 year span, making his comments particularly laughable. Also at the time, Tennessee had just wasted a loaded roster which was fulling capable of winning the division. Jones was fired a year later after putting together the worst season in Tennessee football history.
Fast forward to Jeremy Pruitt, who is coming off of an 8-5 season in 2019 — in the midst of rebuilding from ground zero after Jones was fired. It was a huge positive development, especially after the losses to Georgia State and BYU.
Difference is, Pruitt isn’t giving anybody a chance to be satisfied.
“I would say for everybody that’s associated with Tennessee, we need to raise our expectations,” Pruitt said on Thursday night at a signing day event. “And I know everybody’s excited we went 8-5 and finished the year the right way. But we’ve got to raise our expectations as a program, as a fan base, because the people we’re competing against, they’ve been trying to kick us while we’ve been down, right? We’ve been kicked around a little bit. It’s time for us to start doing a little bit of kicking ourselves.”
The biggest difference is Butch was a salesman and Pruitt is a coach. It's so nice to have a HC that doesn't speak like a politician.
I remember that quote from Butch and it made me mad that he was devaluing the UT brand by saying we should be excited about mediocrity. He also clearly didn’t know anything about our history because 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2007 were well within 20 years at the time and I think those seasons were at least as good if not better.
Thank you for posting this. I had not read Pruitt's comments prior to you posting them, and this is without a doubt one of the fundamental aspects of coaching that went missing with Dooley and Jones, both of whom were consummate excuse-makers from the days they were hired until the days they were fired. This year ended great, and there is more reason for optimism than there has been in at least a decade; I'm not yet ready to anoint Pruitt, just because no coach should be anointed here until he is competing yearly for the SEC; but the simple fact of having high expectations is essential to success in football or any other endeavor, and we were missing it for a long time, so it's heartening to see it now.The difference in mentality between Jeremy Pruitt and Butch Jones is striking
During his time at Tennessee, Jones was thrilled to get to get to nine wins and a bowl game. So when things started going south, Jones pointed to his 2015 and 2016 nine win seasons as some of the best years of Tennessee football in recent memory.
“We have a lot of great things going on right now,” Jones said in an interview with Nashville’s 104.5 The Zone. “We’re experiencing the last three years — the last two years have been some of the best years in the last 20 years of Tennessee football.”
Of course, at the time, Tennessee had won a national championship in that 20 year span, making his comments particularly laughable. Also at the time, Tennessee had just wasted a loaded roster which was fulling capable of winning the division. Jones was fired a year later after putting together the worst season in Tennessee football history.
Fast forward to Jeremy Pruitt, who is coming off of an 8-5 season in 2019 — in the midst of rebuilding from ground zero after Jones was fired. It was a huge positive development, especially after the losses to Georgia State and BYU.
Difference is, Pruitt isn’t giving anybody a chance to be satisfied.
“I would say for everybody that’s associated with Tennessee, we need to raise our expectations,” Pruitt said on Thursday night at a signing day event. “And I know everybody’s excited we went 8-5 and finished the year the right way. But we’ve got to raise our expectations as a program, as a fan base, because the people we’re competing against, they’ve been trying to kick us while we’ve been down, right? We’ve been kicked around a little bit. It’s time for us to start doing a little bit of kicking ourselves.”
The biggest difference is Butch was a salesman and Pruitt is a coach. It's so nice to have a HC that doesn't speak like a politician.
I'll never forget hearing on a Nashville sports talk show how Botch was giving upper-classmen the choice of whether to practice or not on certain days of the week. I was yelling at my radio because I was beside myself that a D-1 football coach could be that unfathomably incompetent.Jeremy Pruitt is a tough head coach while Butch Jones is a soft lying used car dealer in my opinion