The Big Orange Caravan shows some love to West Tennessee, a few of Butch Jones’ favorite things, a raise for an assistant coach, and a relief for a player, all in today’s Vols link roundup.
Football
The Big Orange Caravan hit Memphis yesterday, and more than 900 Vols fans showed up.
Butch Jones took the opportunity to reiterate that West Tennessee is important to the University of Tennessee:
“It’s very, very important,” Jones said. “This is the state of Tennessee. We’ve really made a concentrated effort to get into the Memphis area, and I think that shows in our recent recruiting. Then you look at our players from the Memphis area, they’re having great success right now, with Drew Richmond and obviously Trey Smith from Jackson.
“We’re very, very excited about this area. We’ve made a great commitment to recruit here and be very visible here, as well.”
Jones is also excited about his receiving corps this year, looking forward to Peyton Manning visiting campus sometime this week to spend some time with Quinten Dormady, Jarrett Guarantano, and Will McBride, and managing expectations about the Shy Tuttle’s return from injury (there’s “no timetable,” but Jones does expect him to be back by the season opener, which is great news.) Oh, and Jones has a picture of Jajuan Jennings’ “I-just-burned-Jalen-Tabor” touchdown against the Gators last season on the wall in his office.
Not sure why this is news, really, but athletic director John Currie says that he’s not talked with Butch Jones about his contract. He’s in the middle of it, and I’m not a huge fan of regular re-negotiations anyway, although I know it’s the way of the world these days.
Running backs coach Robert Gillespie got a $35,000 raise, and his now-$510,000 annual salary makes him the highest-paid non-coordinator assistant on the Vols staff. Related: ESPN put Tennessee running back John Kelly on a list of potential 1,000-yard rushers for this fall.
Not only have all criminal charges against Josh Smith been dropped, the threat of civil liability has been dropped as well. Good news. I don’t know the story, and we’ll probably never know, but the whole thing just looked like a molehill.
[ess_grid alias=”grt-2017-promo-grid”][/ess_grid]
Recruiting
Latest offers:
- Class of 2019 5-star defensive lineman (and former teammate of Jarrett Guarantano) Antonio Alfano
- Class of 2019 athlete/cornerback Te’Cory Couch
- Class of 2020 athlete Avantae Williams
- Class of 2020 wide receiver (and TCU commit) Jacobi Bellazin