Clay Travis claims several college coaches are reaching out to him to help them land the Tennessee job
By Keith Farner
Published:
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.
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
