Ex-Vols coach Pruitt sues NCAA, seeking $100M

Former Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruitt has filed a lawsuit against the NCAA seeking $100 million and claims it conspired with the university to make him a “sacrificial lamb.”

Pruitt was fired for cause by Tennessee in January 2021 and didn’t receive any of his $12.6 million buyout after an internal investigation revealed what chancellor Donde Plowman said were serious violations of NCAA rules. The NCAA on July 14, 2023, sentenced Pruitt to a six-year show cause penalty, including a yearlong suspension from coaching in games and recruiting off campus in his first year back should he return to coaching in college.

Pruitt, who could not be reached for comment, has not coached in college football since. At least one other SEC school has shown interest in hiring Pruitt, sources told ESPN, but was dissuaded from doing so by superiors at its university and/or the conference office. Pruitt is currently helping coach his alma mater, Plainview High School in Alabama, with his father, Dale Pruitt.

In the lawsuit, which was filed on Wednesday in DeKalb County, Alabama, Pruitt alleges that Tennessee was paying players before he was hired in December 2017 and that when he notified then-athletic director Phillip Fulmer of the illegal payments, Fulmer said “he would handle it” through the university’s compliance department.

Tennessee issued a response Thursday through a spokesperson that read: “The university is confident in the actions taken in the Pruitt case. We will continue to prioritize our student-athletes and winning with integrity,”

This isn’t the first time Pruitt has turned to the legal system. In 2021, about nine months after his firing, an attorney representing Pruitt at the time, Michael Lyons, threatened a lawsuit against Tennessee if the university failed to reach a settlement with Pruitt by Oct. 29 of that year. Lyons wrote a letter to UT’s general counsel claiming that Pruitt’s lawsuit had the potential to “cripple UT’s athletic programs for years.”

That deadline passed, and nothing ever came of the threatened lawsuit against Tennessee.

But this time, Pruitt has followed through against the NCAA and is adamant that Tennessee was involved. He claims in the lawsuit that he suffered damages, including lost wages and other compensation, future lost wages and other compensation, damage to his reputation, emotional distress and mental anguish and other compensatory damages, all related to NCAA actions. He is claiming that the damages will exceed $100 million but would also allow a jury to determine an amount.

Pruitt’s firing at Tennessee came shortly before the advent of name, image and likeness (NIL), which made payments to players legal. His attorneys in the suit argue that the NCAA punished Pruitt for something that is no longer illegal.

The complaint also notes that shortly after Tennessee’s hearing before the NCAA Division I Committee on Infractions in April 2023, that the state of Tennessee and its attorney general sued the NCAA and successfully obtained a legal ruling that prohibited the NCAA from using its rules to prohibit NIL or inducements of any kind from going to players.

Tennessee was prepared to go on the offensive after the NCAA began investigating the recruitment of star quarterback Nico Iamaleava and whether his reported $8 million NIL deal, crafted by collective Spyre Sports, rose to the level of an illegal recruiting inducement. Sources told ESPN that Tennessee officials had already viewed a preview of the NCAA’s notice of allegations and that the NCAA was poised to make Iamaleava ineligible and require Tennessee to disassociate with Spyre.

A legal battle ensued and was finalized earlier this month when the NCAA dropped its ban on NIL recruiting, which the Tennessee and Virginia state attorney generals had been fighting for when they first sued the NCAA back in 2023.

“Jeremy Pruitt may be the last coach in America to be punished for impermissible player benefits,” his attorneys stated in his complaint.

Per that complaint, Pruitt alleges that Plowman, the university chancellor, told him, “Jeremy, we know you haven’t done anything wrong” while meeting with him to serve notice of intent to terminate his position as head coach of the UT football program, which triggered a multiyear investigatory process leading to what Pruitt’s legal team called a “farcical hearing.”

The lawsuit alleges that the university had a vested interest in the predetermined outcome of the investigation and that the NCAA effectively established a “tribunal” that would accomplish three things: Pruitt taking the blame, the University of Tennessee being commended and the university having cover to avoid paying Pruitt’s buyout.

“The investigation was intentionally limited to avoid examining historical misconduct at UT, which long preceded Jeremy and was hidden from him,” according to the lawsuit, which alleges negligence, wantonness, tortious interference with existing and prospective business relationships, conspiracy and bad faith on the part of the NCAA and eight unnamed defendants, identified as “fictitious defendants One through Eight.”

Tennessee was placed on five years of probation in 2023 by the NCAA. The football program was docked 28 scholarships but avoided a bowl ban. The university was hit with a fine totaling close to $9 million, which the NCAA said was the equivalent to the financial impact the school would have faced had it missed the postseason in 2023 and 2024. It’s believed to be the largest fine ever levied in an NCAA infractions case.

The NCAA said Tennessee’s football program committed 18 Level 1 violations (the most severe in the NCAA rules structure) and more than 200 individual violations during Pruitt’s three seasons as coach. Most of the violations, according to the NCAA’s findings, involved recruiting rules violations and payments to prospects, current athletes and their families, with many of those violations coming during unofficial visits.

The NCAA’s report said $60,000 in impermissible benefits was part of the 200-plus violations and that both Pruitt and his wife, Casey, made cash payments to players and their families.

The NCAA required Tennessee to vacate all wins and individual records in any game in which 16 sanctioned players participated during Pruitt’s three seasons.

Tennessee officials and others, including SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Pruitt, were in Cincinnati for two days in April 2023 as the NCAA Committee on Infractions heard Tennessee’s case, which was triggered when Plowman said in November 2020 that her office had received a credible tip on a potential recruiting violation within the football program. A week later, Tennessee hired the law firm Bond, Schoeneck & King to investigate any wrongdoing. That investigation lasted nearly a year and cost the university more than $1.5 million in legal fees.

In Pruitt’s threatened lawsuit against Tennessee back in 2021, his attorney wrote in a letter to UT’s general counsel: “On behalf of my client, I can tell you that he’s not happy that this is the only choice they’ve left him with, but he’s not going to walk away without getting his day in court.”

Tennessee’s general counsel, Ryan Stinnett, responded by saying the university had no intention of reaching a settlement with Pruitt and was prepared to defend its actions.

Lyons’ letter warned that the lawsuit would reveal violations within Tennessee’s athletic program in previous years involving different coaches and administrators and different sports. He specifically mentioned Fulmer, Plowman and current basketball coach Rick Barnes.

Barnes, in particular, was upset that his name and his basketball program had been dragged into the fray.

Fulmer, who was a Hall of Fame football coach at Tennessee before taking on athletic director duties, told ESPN: “The days I interviewed each candidate for the head football coaching position at the University of Tennessee, including Jeremy Pruitt, I emphasized that you did not have to cheat to win at the University of Tennessee and that cheating would not be tolerated. Jeremy has no one to blame but himself for his firing from UT. He had a great opportunity at a great university, and he simply screwed it up.”

Pruitt was 16-19 in three seasons at Tennessee and 10-16 against SEC opponents.