Jeremy Pruitt has sued the NCAA for $100 million in DeKalb County.
According to paperwork acquired by Yahoo Sports, the former Alabama assistant and Tennessee head football coach is suing for lost salary.
According to writer Ross Dellenger, Pruitt alleges in the lawsuit that the NCAA “conspired with Tennessee” to use him as a “sacrificial lamb” for breaking the rules.
During his time as Tennessee coach, Pruitt committed what the NCAA Committee on Infractions referred to as “aggravated” offences, earning him a six-year show-cause penalty. Pruitt was sacked from Tennessee in 2021.
According to AL.com, Pruitt and a number of his Volunteers employees were accused of 18 NCAA infractions, including over 200 separate offences involving 10 active players and 29 prospects and their families between 2018 and 20.
Recruiting during the NCAA-mandated COVID-19 dead time and unlawful payments and perks totalling over $60,000 were among the allegations.
But before Pruitt arrived in Knoxville, he says, Tennessee was paying athletes unlawfully. Additionally, he asserts that he informed Phillip Fulmer, the athletic director of Tennessee at the time, about infractions in 2017.
According to Yahoo, the lawsuit claims that Fulmer assured Pruitt that “he would handle it.”
According to Pruitt, in 2023, the NCAA employed regulations that “had been essentially abolished in 2021 by the United States Supreme Court ruling” against him.
Tennessee got a five-year probationary period, a $8 million fine, a reduction of 28 scholarships over a five-year period, the revocation of all victories in which ineligible student-athletes competed, and limits on recruiting.
However, it was not banned for the postseason. The school was accused of “Failure to Monitor” its football program, despite having already self-imposed many punishments.
A “paid unofficial visit scheme” involving “110 impermissible hotel room nights, 180 impermissible meals, 72 instances of providing impermissible entertainment or other benefits, 41 impermissible recruiting contacts, 37 instances of providing impermissible game day parking, and 14 instances in which gear was impermissibly provided to prospects” was allegedly used by Pruitt and his Tennessee staff, according to the Committee on Infractions.
