The first day of the early signing period has concluded for the Vols’ 2021 football signing class.
The early singing period goes through Friday.
Third-year Tennessee head coach Jeremy Pruitt met with media Wednesday to discuss players that have signed with the Vols.
Vols’ early signing period tracker
“If you look at today and signing day, we’re really excited,” Pruitt said. “We have 14 guys that have officially signed with us. Over the next several days, we expect to have several more. Just looking at these guys, I can’t say enough about our staff, our recruiting staff, our administration, academics – recruiting is a team effort so everybody in our program really works hard at recruiting. We do it every single day. Our players are probably the best recruiters that we have. Our players have done a tremendous job.
“It’s been very unusual obviously for the recruits in itself because they’ve not been able to come on campus. Building relationships, we started really hard with this class during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it first started. Lots of nights on Zoom calls, FaceTime and on the phone. With this particular class, it seems like to me I know them, I know their families, I know everybody involved around them probably better than any group I’ve been associated with in recruiting just because of the opportunity to do it because we weren’t at work specifically. It’s obviously a group that we’re proud of.”
Early signing period: Jeremy Pruitt details every player that signed with Tennessee on day No. 1
Trinity Bell
“Going down the list, Trinity Bell from Albertville, Alabama, is a guy that actually was in the seventh grade, my dad was the head football coach there and he called me and said, ‘listen, there’s a kid here in the seventh grade,” Pruitt said. “I don’t know if he’s going to play in the NFL or play in the NBA, but he’s going to play somewhere. I want to bring him down and introduce him to you.’
“He’s a young man that I’ve known probably since he was 12 or 13 years old – he was probably 6-4 then. But a guy that’s 6-7-plus, 265 pounds, plays tight end, can play multiple positions. Plays defensive end. A guy that’s just extremely athletic. I talked to him the other night after a basketball game and I said, ‘so how many points did you have?’ He said, ‘I had seven dunks.’ So, I said, ‘did you make any free throws?’ He said, ‘I was 5-for-5.’ So, a guy that’s really, really athletic.”