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Details from a Vol Insider

CheeseATL

National Champion
Gold Member
Feb 4, 2009
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Talked to a friend of mine today from Knoxville. He and his family are very tied in. He gave me the Vol insider low down as most of it is in the public realm at this stage anyway. He acknowledged that there is obviously speculation, but insider Vol nation is a really small-town atmosphere where everyone knows everyone’s business. Here’s the notes I could take while talking to him. Yall know most of this I expect, but fills in some holes with interesting details. As a note, this may not be the most appropriate timeline, but you’ll get the picture.

Background Anecdote

A Vol beat writer (I’m leaving his name out) became a friend of Pruitt’s, who apparently had very few in Knoxville. A year or so back, he went to a golf tournament in Georgia with Pruitt and on the way back, Pruitt stopped at a bank to make a huge withdrawal. They and dropped it off with a contact to make direct payments throughout Georgia. Pruitt was paying these kids out of his own pocket in many instances. Beat writer obviously didn’t care too much, but was at pretty shocked at how brazen the Vols were being about. This story was told to my buddy by the writer.

Pay-for-Play

Niedermeyer and Pruitt were the ones paying players directly. Niedermeyer got sloppy and gave Brian Maurer his credit card to take recruits to a strip club. Brian got drunk and left the card there, so receipts were sent to Athletics to ensure they got paid.

News of the pay for play issues came out during TA&M week. To-oto-o and Eric Gray were told to to sit by compliance, but Pruitt said to hell with it, didn’t care about the compliance staff, and let them play. Pruitt laughed off compliance on multiple occasions apparently. (EDIT: Gray DID sit, so the story is off there. To-oto-o, however, did play.)

The reason the investigation happened is that Trey Smith's (OL) sister Ashley Smith, who is an Asst. AD for UT, heard a discussion between players and Niedermeyer about cash and informed a compliance officer. That officer had been getting **** on by Pruitt for not sitting players and heading warnings, so the officer went directly to Chancellor Donde instead of Pruitt or Fulmer, because Fulmer was also complicit. Donde proactively brought in the outside firm to try to mitigate the damage.

Fulmer was the confidential informant on Bama in 1995 which lead to their probation. This is why Bama has such intense disdain for Fulmer over everybody else. It's also this knowledge that lead UT to let him retire so they could pay his $1MM to keep his mouth shut.

UT has been trying to get Pruitt for cause since early in the season. They were trying to get him for not following COVID protocols, but couldn’t get anything to stick. Tee Martin leaked the investigation to the press because he hates Pruitt…context, Tee Martin was forced on Pruitt by Fulmer. Martin doesn’t actually coach, he just recruits and hangs out with players. He didn’t even show up to his first coaching meeting, and was found in his office asleep with Netflix on in the background. LOL. Pruitt hates him, and Tee hates Pruitt. Tee saw a chance to stick it to Pruitt in the public eye and did.

There have now been 50+ known major violations verified and rising.

It appears that the basketball team is in the same boat. Pratt, big Basketball booster, owns a mortgage company and is funneling money through an AAU program that Vol boosters run. This info is less reliable, but if you’re interested, track the high school kids coming to play ball in Knoxville area private schools before they go to college. The talent is ridiculous.

That’s all I got. Interesting stuff, to say the least. Go Dawgs.
 
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