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Butch Jones improves in-state recruiting as talent level increases
By Keith Farner
Published:
Brick by brick, Butch Jones has steadily worked to build borders around the Volunteer State in recruiting, starting with that 31-day window for the 2013 class. He even spoke to the importance of in-state recruiting in his first National Signing Day press conference.
“I feel we made up a lot of ground,” he said in 2013. “There’s a number of days where I specifically stayed in certain areas of the state to build those relationships, so I’m very encouraged. We’ve already had one junior day and we’ll have about eight more junior days. Recruiting is every day, and we have a great, tremendous brand here. Our coaches have done a great job of getting our recruits to campus. I think we’ve made really great inroads with really establishing the relationship and sharing the vision of what we have for Tennessee football.”
The Vols have kept just under half of the top 10 athletes in Tennessee home. Out of the players ranked in the top 10 in Tennessee in 2013, 2014 and 2015, according to 247Sports Composite, Tennessee has signed 14 of the 30. The best class for keeping in-state talent was 2014 when the Vols secured eight, including the top three, WR Josh Malone, RB Jalen Hurd and S Todd Kelly, Jr.
While Georgia and Ole Miss have picked off two and three top 10 players, respectively, Vanderbilt has also secured three. But Alabama, Notre Dame, Florida State, LSU and even UCLA has poached talent. In the 2016 class, for example, the state’s top prospect, WR Dillon Mitchell, is committed to Oregon. Tennessee has just two of the top 10, and what’s more, the 10 players are committed to seven different schools, including three others in the SEC (Vanderbilt, Ole Miss and Texas A&M).
Twenty-five of the 30 recruits from 2013-15 were four-star players, and the state produced just one five-star player in that three-year time frame, CB Jalen Ramsey from Brentwood, Tenn., who went to Florida State.
The Tennessean reported that of the 82 players signed by Jones overall in his three recruiting classes at UT, 24 are from inside the state. It’s a considerable improvement from the recruiting classes of Jones’ predecessors. The newspaper’s look back at the 1994 class with Peyton Manning, ranked by Sports Illustrated as one of the best ever, showed just three in-state products. Derek Dooley, for example, signed 12 in-state players in three years.
A favorable combination is Tennessee’s population growth and its improvement in high school football, Jones said.
“You look at the Midstate in general, it’s one of the rising population bases in the country,” he told The Tennessean. “There are great high school coaches throughout the entire state of Tennessee. There are great football players.”
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
