Clay Travis claims several college coaches are reaching out to him to help them land the Tennessee job
One media personality with a close pulse on the state of the Tennessee program is Clay Travis of Outkick.com.
Travis was a recent guest on “The Roundtable” on WJOX, and explained why he thinks the Vols job is still attractive even though former coach Jeremy Pruitt was fired following an internal investigation into recruiting practices that yielded Level I and Level II violations from the NCAA.
“The amount of coaches that are interested in this Tennessee job is really, really impressive, that have reached out directly to me,” Travis said. “I’ve got five guys that I know, that all of you would know, that have reached out and said they want this job and can I help them get it?”
Travis pushed back at the “toxic” allegations in and around the program, and he added that the talent is not awful on Rocky Top. He explained what some outsiders, like the WJOX co-hosts, have underrated.
“They know the overall talent, it’s relatively young at Tennessee,” he said. “The amount of talent within a four-hour drive of Knoxville is off the charts. I think coaches know that, and I think a lot of people in media haven’t really sat down and looked at how the map has altered over the last 20 years or so.”
Travis explained that the population explosion in and around Nashville, Charlotte and Atlanta is enough to help a program like Tennessee win a national championship.
“Coaches are seeing this, I don’t think that the media has seen it,” Travis said. “It’s becoming a really fertile recruiting ground, and every year it’s getting a little bit better with the overall population.”
Travis also added that the Class of 2022 in the state of Tennessee has already been mentioned in recruiting circles as arguably the best collection of talent to ever come out of the state.
Travis went on to mention Ole Miss as a program that Tennessee could resemble in a couple years as the Rebels bounced back from a host of Level I violations, and have charted a positive outlook under Lane Kiffin.
Clay Travis… really? A coach would have to pretty desperate to ask for his help. I could call BS on Clay every time and be 98% accurate.
It doesn’t sound feasible that CT has any pull anywhere. Kinda like Dan Patrick, people take what he says for gospel and he’s just another sports mouth
It’s funny. One writer is criticized for not knowing anything and another because he’s too close to the program. Travis knows more than most.
Yep.
Press X to doubt CT
Is Clay Travis in the business of matching HC candidates and football programs? Why would coaches reach out to him?
what’s ironic is that clay travis is someone who would call b.s. on another “media personality” who was claiming what’s he’s claiming about coaches contacting him asking for help
CT is a vol fan trying to keep the players from transferring and recruits from decommitting by floating this nonsense. Simple.
UT is a great job. Lots of money. Great facilities. It’s problems are nothing compared to Penn State and they bounced back. Frankly, it’s a great opportunity for the university to get rid of staff who didn’t work out and get new HC and staff.
Travis is a clown. Then again, UTk is a circus right now, so perhaps he’s right on something.
If you want a certain coaching job, you call Jimmy Sexton. Not Clay Travis.
I didn’t realize Clay Travis still had bad takes about Tennessee football. I thought he’d pivoted to bad takes about politics and pandemics.
So Travis is a coach head hunter? Who knew?
What he’s saying, really, is UT has some national potential because of Georgia’s population and blue-chip production. When the 2020 census figures finally come out, it’ll be interesting to see which is more populous – the Atlanta CMSA or the entire state of Tennessee. Both should be just over 7 million. Nashville just cracked 2 million in their metro. That’s where Atlanta was 40 years ago. It did not make it a recruiting hotbed then, and it won’t make Nashville one now.
Put another way, the only two states that produced more blue-chip players than Georgia in 2020 were Florida and Texas. Georgia had 36. California had 30. Tennessee had 11. Two actually signed with UT. The 3rd 4-star was Harrison Bailey – from Georgia.
Lane Kiffin made no bones about it when he got to Knoxville – the road to success for UT absolutely had to run through Georgia. One of the first things he did was plaster the Atlanta metro area with Big Orange billboards.
And as to population equaling success at a state university, two examples: California is by far the most populous state in the country, yet they haven’t had a school challenge for a natty since USC got busted way back when. Conversely, Alabama is 24th in population and Louisiana is 25th – and those two state have accounted for the majority of the natties in the past 18 years.
Yet Georgia still can’t win a Natty.
Nobody does less with more like jawga.
Lessee, UGA has an SEC championship 20 years more recently than UT. Ditto for a NC game appearance. You don’t even want me to point out the Vols record vs UGA for the past 20 years, or East division titles. UGA has the 6th best record in college football this century while UT is somewhere in the 50s or 60s, and on a downward bullet.
UGA is relevant in the national CFB discussion every year. UT is a laughing stock and embarrassment to the conference.
Using the lack of a natty to criticize UGA in an era when Nick Saban rules the roost is incredibly weak, and speaks volumes about your desperation to deflect attention from an entire generation of futility in Knoxville, and the tire fire your football program has become. Stay on point, Skippy – the discussion is about Tennessee, no one else.
I’d say UT’s record in 2020 is the epitome of doing less with more.
Like Clay Travis could help someone get a job.
This sounds like UT reputation enhancement to me.
But if Clay Travis is telling the truth, the fact that there are 5 reputable guys with the cohunes to walk right out into the middle of that sewer gas fueled football field sized dumpster fire to stomp it out is impressive. I would have thought it would take scanning the entire universe for 100 years just to find 1 or 2.
Nothing but unsubstantiated leaks. Who gave money to who, when and where? Crickets. Money comes from boosters. This whole firing smells.
Folks who say that Tennessee will never be a force again in the SEC are just fooling themselves. Its wishful thinking. There are too many positives there. They will be back. The state is exploding, businesses moving there with major metropolitan centers. I dont know when it will happen, but it will happen.
What “major metropolitan centers”? Nashville is the 36th largest metro area in the US, while Memphis is 43rd. If you could somehow combine them together, you get Tampa – good for only 18th largest.
It’s not hard to record eye-popping population growth percentages for a decade or so when you’re that small, relatively speaking. Add 80,000 new residents to a metro area of 1.5 million and you have a big, impressive number. Add the same number to Dallas, Houston, Atlanta or Miami and it’s a drop in the bucket. The trick – the really hard trick – is to sustain it over several consecutive decades.
And again, as I pointed out elsewhere above, most of the sustained success in CFB this century has come from middling-to-smaller states with populations around 5 million: Alabama, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina. Think about that, and most importantly think about why that is.
He means compared to Birmingham and Montgomery LOL.
If UT is that good of a job, with that kind of talent, then why have they not won the conference since 1998, or even their division in 13 years? The job would be great if not for the toxic fanbase that has an overinflated opinion of their program, and the boosters that buy coaches out at the drop of one of Smokey’s piles.
We’re in the same position Bama was before Saban was hired. Alabama wandered in the wilderness from Stallings until Saban (with a few years of exception). The Bama fanbase was just as crazy then as UT’s is now. The main problem is there is no Saban out there for UT to hire to get out of this mess. That’s what it will take. I think we will be a lower tier East team for the forseeable future.
Our fanbase was not as toxic, nor were our trustees. Bama also hade the benefit of having won 7 national titles to 1 for UT to help with the improvement. It also helped that every coach since Bryant has had a 10 win season I believe, as well as won 3 SEC title prior to Saban. Enough to keep the program relevant, but just barely. I hardly recognize the program from when my family member was the AD there. Times have changed, UT hasn’t.
Clay Travis has always been full of himself, no surprise here.
The endless ads at the bottom of every page are so annoying. At least give us a chance to x out of them after a few seconds.