It’s been a rough few days at Tennessee for Phillip Fulmer as the school’s internal investigation has uncovered multiple recruiting violations that Chancellor Donde Plowman defined as multiple Level I and Level II incidents. She did not give a clear indication of how many possible violations occurred, citing an ongoing investigation.

If you are unaware, Level I violations are the most severe violations according to the NCAA enforcement staff.

Following the findings from that investigation, Jeremy Pruitt has been fired for cause and the school does not plan on paying the coach’s buyout. Plowman indicated Tennessee does not plan to pay Pruitt his buyout due to the violations that occurred under his watch.

In addition to Pruitt’s firing, the school announced the firings of nine others, including assistant football coaches Brian Niedermeyer and Shelton Felton.

During a Monday press conference held by Tennessee, a clearly distraught Phillip Fulmer was asked about Pruitt’s legacy at Tennessee.

“We found the program in quite a mess at the time. I think we definitely upgraded the program in general, relationships in general. Relationships period, certainly the recruiting has been good. There’s some really outstanding men in the program – not that there wasn’t before. There’s lots of good things that have happened.”

Here’s a clip showing some of Fulmer’s response, but it’s clearly not a good idea to point toward Pruitt’s recruiting given the fact the school just fired the coach for recruiting violations that happened under his watch.

https://twitter.com/colecubelic/status/1351266593582493698