How Tennessee football is recruiting during NCAA-mandated dead period

Tennessee’s football staff has a meeting every day at 8 a.m. “just to get the day started,” coach Jeremy Pruitt said Friday.

One of the top priorities is going over recruiting calls, as the Vols are adjusting to a process without the ability to host on-campus visits as a precaution against the spread of COVID-19.

“You have to take the University of Tennessee to them,” Pruitt said on a Zoom call.

The NCAA ordered all programs instituted a recruiting dead period on March 13, suspending all official or unofficial visits as the sports world responded to the global pandemic. FBS and FCS football were in a quiet period already, meaning the only permissible in-person contact takes place on campus.

The NCAA on Wednesday extended the dead period through May 31, covering the spring evaluation period during which coaches travel to recruit, check grades and observe workouts. 

Tennessee is using social media to recruit and focusing on the evaluations it already has to work on building recruiting classes.

Pruitt stressed that social media affords the Vols “a really good opportunity” to communicate with the 2021 class. It is more complicated with the 2022 class, which coaches cannot communicate with presently. 

“When it comes to recruiting, there’s lots of guys who have been on our campus and there’s some who have not,” Pruitt said. “We have to do a really job for them to get a really good feel for what it is like on game day at Tennessee, what it is like in the classroom and who are the people who are going to be able to help them grow and develop on and off the field throughout their four years at Tennessee.”

UT has summer prospect camps scheduled throughout the summer, but those could be affected if the NCAA adds further suspensions to the recruiting calendar. Typically, those camps lead to both upperclassmen and underclassmen receiving Tennessee offers and the Vols have added commitments in recent classes during June.

The camps are currently scheduled to proceed as scheduled, but Tennessee’s website indicates the university is “continually monitoring COVID-19 developments.”

If they are canceled, Pruitt said Tennessee will built its recruiting board based on what it already knows and can evaluate digitally. 

"We have to gather as much information as we can so we can move forward and understand,” Pruitt said. “We have a plan of who we stack our boards and how we evaluate the things we are looking for.”

Pruitt expects that process would resemble what NFL teams are currently dealing with. Team personnel got a close look at some prospects in some drills at the NFL Combine, but not a comprehensive view. 

NFL teams are left to go back and review tape, practice evaluations and feedback from scouts, which Pruitt likened to what Tennessee will do.

“We have to do a really good job to gather the information and make good decisions and trust our (evaluations),” Pruitt said.

Tennessee landed two commitments in the past week in North Carolina running back Jaylen Wright and in-state wide receiver Walker Merrill. The Vols have nine commitments for the 2021 class, which ranks No. 12 nationally in the 247Sports Composite.