When former Georgia quarterback and CBS Sports Network analyst Aaron Murray said he didn’t know if new Tennessee coach Jeremy Pruitt has the personality “fit to be a head coach,” it was inevitable Pruitt would be asked about it at his first appearance at SEC Media Days Wednesday.
In an interview with Tuesday on 102.5 The Game, Murray was particularly critical of how the way Pruitt treated then Georgia head coach Mark Richt when Pruitt served as UGA’s defensive coordinator from 2014 to 2015.
“When he was at Georgia, the way he acted, the way he treated Coach Richt I thought was poor,” Murray said of Pruitt via the Knoxville News Sentinel’s Blake Toppmeyer. “He wasn’t as respectful as I thought a defensive coordinator should be to a head coach.”
As expected, Pruitt was asked about Murray’s remarks Wednesday morning before he took the podium in Atlanta, and he attempted to let his record speak for itself.
“Fifteen years ago, I was a kindergarten teacher. Now, I’m the head coach at Tennessee,” Pruitt said, according to David Ubben of The Athletic. “You probably don’t make that ascension without knowing how to treat people.”
Before his days as a football coach, Pruitt taught PE at Wills Valley Elementary School in Fort Payne, Ala. Pruitt rose to prominence as a high school football coach before joining Nick Saban’s Alabama staff in 2007 before moving to Florida State as defensive coordinator in 2013 and eventually to Georgia in 2014. Murray left UGA the season before Pruitt arrived.
