Jeremy Pruitt talks balancing Alabama and Tennessee gigs; Shares an awkward recruiting story

Now comes the weird part of this process. After a tumultuous search for a head coach, Tennessee finally settled on and landed Jeremy Pruitt. Part of the deal was Pruitt going back to Alabama to finish what he started as he tries to help the Tide to a national championship.

Pruitt had his media availability yesterday, but wasn’t all that interested in talking about Tennessee with such a big moment looming for Alabama. He did once again offer his reasoning for coming back to Alabama.

“I'm employed by Tennessee and I'm recruiting for Tennessee but when I get here I owe it to these guys I helped recruit to Alabama there's plenty of hours in a day to balance it everyday."

As Pruitt was describing his balancing act, he shared a funny story involving himself, Alabama head coach Nick Saban and linebackers coach Tosh Lupoi. After the on the field scheming was done, it was time to focus on recruiting.

Lupoi: “We’ve got a couple more you need to call, coach,’” Pruitt said. “Coach Saban looked at him, nobody said anything, and he said, ‘Well who?’ “Tosh just kind of paused and I said, ‘Tosh, do you need me to leave the room?’ Everybody got a kick out of it.”

Pruitt wrapped up his comments on Tennessee with this.

“We all recruit the same guys, we're gonna recruit the same guys that Florida State does, that LSU does, that Auburn does. The thing about it is the guys on all these staffs we're all friends and there's not gonna be any recruit that's gonna get in the way of our friendship if that makes sense. If we're not recruiting the same guys that Alabama and Florida State and Auburn and Georgia's recruiting or Ohio State then we're probably recruiting the wrong guys."

Alabama will take on Clemson Monday at 8 PM eastern. The winner of course will advance to the National Championship, taking on the winner of Oklahoma-Georgia. So Tennessee will have their new head coach back in Knoxville either January 2nd, or January 9th.

Until then, it’s going to be a little weird.