Butch Jones And Tennessee Volunteers Building Recruiting Relationships

Apr 20, 2013; Knoxville, TN, USA; Tennessee Volunteers head coach Butch Jones speaks after the spring Orange and White game at Neyland Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Randy Sartin-USA TODAY Sports

Every coach at virtually every school in the country loves to pound their chest and trumpet the fact that they plan to build a fence around their home state. At Tennessee, we heard Lane Kiffin and Derek Dooley make similar claims and then largely abandon that philosophy in lieu of more fertile lands.

Butch Jones, on the other hand, is putting in the necessary face time to rehabilitate relationships with Tennessee high school coaches that were damaged during previous administrations. That’s critical not only because the state is loaded with SEC-caliber talent in 2014, but because the state itself seems to be on the general upswing in terms of talent production.

Butch Jones may not ever have the luxury of cherry-picking from hundreds of talented prospects in Tennessee like you can in Texas, Georgia and Florida, but if he can routinely pull five, seven or even 10 capable prospects from Tennessee, he gives himself a solid base to any recruiting class. With four current commitments from in-state prospects in 2014 and three already in 2015, it’d appear that Jones is getting off on the right foot in the Volunteer State.

“The way he has reached out to high school coaches, especially in the state of Tennessee, has been well-received,” Knoxville News Sentinel reporter Evan Woodberry said. “Those are areas where he probably contrasts his predecessor. I like Derek Dooley a lot, but he was not necessarily a people person or a relationship person, whereas Butch… that’s his forte.”

However, at the same time, some of Butch Jones’ early recruiting success at the University of Tennessee can be attributed to the raccoon-trap effect of being the new guy on the block. People are intrigued by this gregarious and energetic fresh face. Jones is shiny and new, but when the initial curiosity wears off, he’ll have to have the track record to back it up.

He’s won at both Central Michigan and Cincinnati, but if we’re being honest, he was less successful than his predecessor—Brian Kelly in both instances—at both of his previous stops. It’d be hard to imagine that he could be worse than Derek Dooley, who provided Tennessee fans with the worse three-year stretch in their history, but Butch Jones will have to put some distance between himself and Kelly’s shadow.

That will be no easy feat with a roster that leaves something to be desired in 2013. The expectations have been fairly realistic from a media standpoint, and it seems like most fans understand that making a bowl game would be a serious accomplishment in Year One. However, if the season doesn’t go as planned and the Vols hit a rough stretch, will Butch Jones be able to hold his heralded recruiting class together? Will those relationships hold?

Vic Wharton seems to think so.

“We will end up being the No. 1 class. Everyone says that National Signing Day is far away and whatnot, but the thing is, we don’t preach ‘come to our school because our team’s gonna win a lot of games this year.’ We’re telling people if you come to our school you get to play with us, and WE’LL bring a national championship,” he said. “We don’t really care—I mean if Coach Jones goes ahead and wins six games, that will help—and if he wins two or three games, our entire class will still come to Tennessee. It doesn’t matter.”

Of course, No. 1 is relative, and as Evan Woodberry notes, Tennessee’s current recruiting ranking is based largely on volume. The Vols have more commitments than any school except for Baylor (16) and Louisville, who is tied with 15 commits.

The Vols should be able to take approximately 30 kids and, given the names that they’re still in on, this is shaping up to be an amazing class, regardless of where it “officially” ranks. It seems like it might be comparable to Hugh Freeze’s “Dream Class” at Ole Miss last season.

However, Butch Jones is still going to have to load up in the trenches with all the graduating talent on the offensive line and the general lack thereof on the defensive line. Right now, Henderson is the only defensive line commitment in this class, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned about the SEC in the last decade, it’s that it isn’t flash and panache that wins SEC championships.

“Both sides of the line will be losing a ton of experience after this year, which makes it absolutely imperative that they add some big men in the 2014 class,” Woodberry said. “In a perfect world, that would include at least a couple of junior college linemen who have the ability to compete for playing time immediately.”

With the addition of several talented bigs on both sides of the ball, this class has the makings of one that could bring Tennessee back to prominence in the Southeastern Conference. The foundation for all of that has been Butch Jones and his ability to build relationships based on trust.

After all, Jones is a man who builds things. He stacked bricks at Central Michigan. He stacked bricks at Cincinnati, and now he’s stacking bricks at Tennessee.

However, now that he’s at a job that he has very clearly labeled as his “destination” job, it won’t be building something that defines Butch Jones.

It’ll be finishing something.

You can only stack bricks so high before it’s time to put a roof on them and call it home.