The Tennessee football program has been living right since Josh Heupel took over as head coach in early 2021. Coming off a 3-7 season, Tennessee has gone 7-6 and 11-2 with wins over Alabama, Florida, LSU and Clemson.
Tennessee’s 2022 football season was its best in over two decades and while Heupel’s program kept building momentum there was an elephant in the room.
The NCAA announcing Tennessee’s sanctions from the recruiting scandal that precipitated the end of Jeremy Pruitt’s tenure removes the elephant from the room. The NCAA slapped Tennessee with an $8 million fine, a loss of 10 additional scholarships (the Vols had self sanctioned a loss of scholarships already) and additional recruiting sanctions during a five-year probation.
While the fine is hefty, the overall view of the sanctions is favorable to Tennessee with the Vols avoiding a bowl ban and having already served most of their scholarship reductions.
But for Heupel, the biggest win of the NCAA’s decision was that it came and is over. The Vols no longer have the dark cloud of the NCAA over the program.
“You’re not dealing with unknowns now, not dealing with other programs that are beating you up in some way sensationalizing what’s going to happen,” Heupel said at SEC Media Days. “I was able to have great trust in what our administration was talking to us about. We were, you know, consistent and clear on that messaging to our recruits, and that’s why we have been able to recruit at a really high level. But it’s great to have it in the rear-view mirror, not something that you’re driving by all the time.”
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Negative recruiting is not a new concept or rarity in college football. Heupel and his staff have had to deal with an abundance of it early in their tenure due to the NCAA investigation.
Heupel’s first full recruiting class at Tennessee (class of 2022) started slow with the lack of buzz around the Volunteer program entering the 2021 season. But after Tennessee overachieved in 2021, the Vols finished strong and landed the nation’s No. 17 class according tot he 247sports composite team rankings.
Tennessee’s recruiting took another step forward in 2023. The Vols landed four top 100 recruits to boast the nation’s No. 10 recruiting class— Tennessee’s first top 10 class since 2020. Many of those now freshman will make an impact on the field for Tennessee this fall.
While Tennessee avoiding a bowl ban was crucial for its upcoming recruiting classes, it also validated what Heupel and his staff had told the 2022 and 2023 recruiting classes.
“The guys that signed with us in the last 18 to 24 months that trust what we were saying to them, the transparency of the dialogue that we had with them, it was unbelievably satisfying to get over that hump,” Heupel said.
Tennessee is poised to sign its second straight top 10 class and potentially its best recruiting class since 2015. The Vols are hot on the recruiting trail in late July boasting an 18 commit class that currently ranks eighth nationally. The average recruit ranking of Tennessee’s commits is the seventh best in the country and is narrowly behind Florida, Texas A&M and USC.
