Second in a series on first-year Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt
Part 1: The Influencer: Jeremy Pruitt brings Rainsville to Tennessee and Tennessee to Rainsville
Part 3: For Jeremy Pruitt, being opportunistic as a player created opportunity in coaching
Part 4: A commitment to football and his own health
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Part 5: Tracing Jeremy Pruitt’s rise from kindergarten P.E. teacher to Tennessee’s head coach
Part 6: What went into the Jeremy Pruitt-Tennessee match
RAINSVILLE, Ala. — First things first: You’ve been deceived.
Type Jeremy Pruitt’s name into Google, and before you press enter, “Jeremy Pruitt asparagus” almost certainly will be one of the suggested search terms. Tom Osborne might be the only coach in college football history more inextricably linked with a vegetable.
Examine the link between the two, and you’ll find one of college football’s most enduring viral clips.
“I remember us getting onto (Pruitt’s mother) Melissa because he didn’t know what asparagus was,” said longtime family friend Terry Mitchell, who coached in Rainsville for 40 years and taught both of Pruitt’s parents. “That hurts, man.”
But ask around a little bit, and you quickly learn the truth: It was based on a lie.
“When I saw it, I told somebody, ‘Crap, I promise you, he’s probably got asparagus in the refrigerator,’ ” said Dale Pruitt, Jeremy’s father.
As for the key subject’s take? He chalks it up to a moment of absent-mindedness.
“Nah, I knew what asparagus was,” Jeremy Pruitt said. “Just when they brought it out, it just didn’t register.”
These days, the running joke is not unlike a pile of asparagus left sitting on a plate: quickly losing steam. But it’s still the most lasting moment of the new Tennessee head coach’s runaway role in the wildly popular teen football drama series “Two-A-Days” on MTV that ran for two seasons in 2006 and 2007. Pruitt just never cared enough to dispute it publicly.
On the road during the show’s second season, asparagus-based signs and chants were common.
“When it started to kind of become a thing, he was like, ‘Ah, whatever,’ ” his brother, Luke Pruitt, said. “Now, every time he grills, he usually has some and he’s grilling with it.”
So what was fact and what was fiction on the trailblazing show’s two-season run, allowing millions to watch the 2005 and 2006 seasons at Hoover High School play out through a reality TV lens?
“That was not as much fun as everybody thought it was,” Dale Pruitt said.
Hoover head coach Rush Propst had all but officially settled on a different candidate to be his defensive backs coach before he decided to grant Jeremy Pruitt a courtesy interview after the 2003 season.
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He’d gotten, by his estimate, at least 35-40 calls from a number he recognized as the son of Dale Pruitt, his longtime coaching peer in the state of Alabama. He figured it would be worth his time to at least have a conversation. If he didn’t hire him this time, at least Hoover would have a name in mind the next time a job came open.
“Once we actually put Jeremy on the board drawing different stuff up, he was really advanced for his age and experience,” Propst told The Athletic.
So he went with his gut, called off his previous plan and offered the job to Pruitt.
Three months later, he handed off special teams coordinator responsibilities to his newest position coach. That December, with a Bill Clark-coached Prattville team waiting in the state title game, Pruitt drew up a new punt-block scheme that resulted in two blocks — one returned for a touchdown — and a near block that forced a shank.
“Those three plays were humongous in getting that victory that night,” Propst said. “He did one hell of a job with that, and we won a state championship in a year we probably shouldn’t have.”
The following offseason, Hoover defensive coordinator Todd Watson (now Tennessee’s director of football operations) left for a head coaching job. Propst handed the reins of his defense to Pruitt, but he had some news, too. A production company was interested in filming a high school football reality show, and Hoover, a budding national powerhouse, was in the running as a finalist.
Pruitt and then-offensive coordinator David Faulkner were united on that prospect.
“We said no. Absolutely not. We do not want to do this,” Pruitt said. “Obviously, we didn’t have any say.”
The cameras arrived in time to chronicle preseason camp and preparations for Pruitt’s first game calling the Buccaneers’ defense. He was charged with trying to stop a young quarterback from Nease High School in Ponte Vedra, Fla., named Tim Tebow for a game televised nationally on ESPN. Between the “Two-A-Days” crew, the ESPN live broadcast and a separate ESPN2 documentary crew following Tebow, Propst was told after the game there were more microphones on the field for that hyped showdown than the previous season’s Super Bowl.
Pruitt could sense the attention and the magnitude of the situation. The night before the game, paramedics had to rush to his hotel room after his blood pressure spiked.
“It was stress-driven. We laughed about it afterward, but at the time it was serious,” Propst said. “He looked like he hadn’t slept in two or three weeks. Probably because I bet he hadn’t.”
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Hoover won that game and ultimately another state title that season, and Pruitt emerged as one of the show’s most memorable scene stealers. “Two-A-Days” provided what was then a rare, raw glimpse into high-intensity practices, games and the often-coarse language that colors them. It shocked some and drew criticism of Propst, his assistants and the program.
Pruitt’s grandfather is a Baptist preacher in his hometown, and Mitchell remembers Pruitt offering up a warning before the shows began airing: Please don’t watch, Granddad.
“I’ve watched all of it,” childhood friend Jason Traylor said. “I remember thinking, ‘What’s his momma gonna say?’ ”
Pruitt’s relationship with talented but sometimes distracted defensive back Max Lerner was a particular focus of the show. So was his relationship with Lerner’s stepfather, Jim Counts. Counts attended most practices, and in the infamous asparagus clip, he is the man to whom the vegetable is delivered. In one early episode, he offers assurance to Lerner during a family dinner at home.
“He doesn’t hate you. He’s just disappointed,” Counts tells Lerner.
In a later practice, Pruitt takes offense to Lerner’s attitude.
“Throw your hands up at me again and see what happens!” he yells.
“He’s constantly teaching the game and constantly holding kids accountable,” Propst said. “He’s really hard on kids, but they trust him, and they follow him.”
Late in the season, Pruitt loudly chastises one of the show’s stars, defensive lineman Repete Smith, for flirting with opposing cheerleaders on the sideline after a win.
“Why don’t you show some class?” he says.
“What you see is what you get, and that’s still him today. He was coaching hard, getting after people,” said Cornelius Williams, a star receiver on that Hoover team who now serves as the receivers coach at Troy. “He’s a good ol’ country boy, and that’s who he was.”
Williams was a freshman at Troy when the show aired, and he gathered with teammates each week to watch. He’d constantly get recognized on campus for being on the show, and like Pruitt, his mother banned the cameras from visiting his home.
But inside the facility, there was no hiding. Production installed cameras throughout, including in the coaches’ offices. Propst wore a mic from the moment he woke up until he went to sleep.
Pruitt was loud, intense and sometimes controversial throughout the show’s run. But he was his unapologetic self.
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“He might have tried cleaning up his accent a bit,” Smith said. “It just didn’t work.”
Pruitt’s hatred for the cameras was consistent. He once denied them access to the Pruitt family Thanksgiving dinner. But after the first few weeks, he stopped noticing them — sometimes to the detriment of the people holding the film equipment.
“We had a turnover, a sudden change, and we were over there on the board,” said Luke Pruitt, who joined Hoover’s staff in 2006 in time for Season 2 of the show’s filming. “There was a guy holding a boom mic. They’re right there on top of us, but Jeremy turns and gives him a forearm trying to get back to the field. I think he broke the boom mic in the process. I don’t think they appreciated that.”
Pruitt kept his complaints away from Propst, saving his grumblings about distractions and camera-induced headaches for private conversations with family.
Was there anything he did enjoy about the show?
“Nah,” Pruitt said with a shake of the head.
Before the state championship game the first year, production drew Pruitt’s ire for swiping three of his players’ shoulder pads without his knowledge and outfitting them with microphones. When the players needed the pads, they were nowhere to be found.
“Is that not crazy? That’s what I’m talking about,” Pruitt said. “Distractions.”
Naturally, the conversation when Pruitt learned what had happened to his players’ equipment did not make the final cut of the show. And no, he never did sit down and watch a single episode.
“The show portrays Jeremy as a jerk,” Luke Pruitt said. “But that’s the thing about pushing buttons. The guy he got on, Max, went on to play for Furman, and that’s how you push Max’s buttons. That’s just how he had to be coached. He thrived in that style, even if it made Jeremy look like a jerk.”
With the benefit of hindsight, Pruitt admits the exposure raised his profile and “probably helped me down the road.” Just don’t expect a documentary crew to set up shop anywhere near Neyland Stadium any time soon.
(Top photo by Caitie McMekin / Knoxville News Sentinel via USA TODAY NETWORK)
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