Alabama Football: What NCAA can and can’t do to UT and what will happen

Alabama football fans are somewhat interested in how hard the NCAA will punish Tennessee. For older fans who still rejoice in any adversity for the Vols, a strong punishment would be relished. Some younger fans who don’t consider the Vols a rival, have interest driven by questions of Jeremy Pruitt’s future and will he be so tarnished he can never coach for the Crimson Tide again.

Few Alabama fans, even those who have followed the investigation, believe a toothless NCAA will go beyond a wrist slap.

Alabama Football and Tennessee off-field history

The central player in the history of intense feelings between the Tide and the Vols is Phil Fulmer. Even for Tennessee fans, Fulmer is a ‘love him’ or ‘hate him’ guy. Going way back to when he was a Vols assistant coach, some Tennessee fans contend, that Fulmer undercut his boss and Vol legend, Johnny Majors so effectively, Tennessee cut Majors loose. Fulmer then replaced Majors.

Fulmer became a Tennessee legend with the 1998 National Championship. He had a strong run as the Vols head coach, but it ended when Nick Saban came to Tuscaloosa. During most of Fulmer’s 17-season Vols’ career, he attempted to damage Alabama Football. He had some success in triggering NCAA scrutiny of the Tide. The long, intense feud took many turns, too numerous to include here.

It is at times a sordid tale, with some unsavory characters who disregarded NCAA rules and had a penchant for mendacity.

A recap of the Alabama and Fulmer saga, published a few years ago, provides details.

Current Tennessee NCAA Trouble

The Vols’ recent problems with the NCAA are being blamed on Jeremy Pruitt. As the Tennessee, Athletic Director, Phil Fulmer hired Pruitt.

The NCAA has charged Tennessee with 18 Level One violations, involving more than a dozen former Tennessee recruits, players and family members. The amount of cash or gifts passed along by Pruitt and his wife, multiple assistant coaches and at least one booster totals almost $60,000.

The Knoxville News got a copy of the 51-page Notice of Allegations. The paper goes into detail for each of the 18 violations.

What will and will not happen?

The NCAA has moved away from post-season bans because they punish players not involved in NCAA violations. Tennessee has already self-imposed some penalties. Helping the Tennessee defense is the NCAA acknowledged full cooperation with the investigation by the University of Tennessee.

The Vols hired a firm to help with an internal investigation and turned the results over to the NCAA. The internal investigation allowed Tennessee to place most of the blame on Jeremy Pruitt and as a result, fire him with cause. That termination with cause saved Tennessee millions of dollars it would have owed Pruitt had he been fired without cause.

A best guess is the NCAA will add additional penalties, but nothing that in total would amount to a severe punishment.

Was Phil Fulmer aware of what Pruitt did? Did Fulmer encourage Pruitt to break NCAA rules? Probably is the answer to both questions, but so far there is no publicly available proof.

Readers no doubt caught the irony in this story when the amount of $60,000 was included. In today’s NIL era, $60K is peanuts, compared to $8M deals for QB recruits. In a college football world with no NIL, Pruitt’s misdeeds would have taken longer than a lifetime to come close to the dollars in one large NIL deal.