Pruitt: Vols Remain COVID-19 Free, Controlling Own Surroundings

Tennessee’s basketball program has been dealing with a minor outbreak of COVID-19 among their players, with two members of Rick Barnes’ squad testing positive for the virus in the last week. While the spread of the virus within the university undoubtedly caused concern for Tennessee Football coach Jeremy Pruitt, recently announced on the Dan Patrick Show that the Vols’ Football program still did not have any positive COVID-19 tests among its players.

Pruitt made the announcement during an appearance on the Dan Patrick Show. “Yeah, with all the players we’ve had in here that we’ve tested, we’ve had zero positive tests with the guys that we’ve tested,” said the third year Tennessee head coach. “Our guys are going out for a three-day weekend this weekend. So, they’ll have a plan when they come back to get everyone in our program tested (again) when they come back and then we’ll start over.”

The news comes in a time of uncertainty for College Football teams across the country, as large outbreaks within multiple major universities have caused some to doubt whether there will be a season this year. One of the teams that has been hit hard by COVID-19 is Clemson, which had 37 players test positive for the virus — making it the epicenter of the pandemic for the College Football World. While many universities have handled the pandemic well, including Tennessee, having some large outbreaks for such major teams will make it tough to have a ‘normal’ season.

However, Pruitt also made it clear that the team would not worry about the spread of the Coronavirus during his interview with Dan Patrick, and instead the team would focus on other issues that they had more control over. “We’ve been worried about the things that we have control over,” said Pruitt. “Once we get in here and we have tests, we don’t have negatives, we control our own surroundings. We’ve done a really nice job of that this summer and we have to continue to do that.”

As it stands today, the College Football season will begin on August 29th, and Tennessee’s season will get started on September 5th, when the Volunteers look to take care of the Charlotte 49ers with ease in Neyland Stadium. If everything goes smoothly with no problems, Tennessee will then travel to Norman for a heavy-weight battle with the Oklahoma Sooners on September 12th, afterwards the Vols will return back to Knoxville to take on Furman. If COVID-19 doesn’t get out of control by then, the Vols would then begin to take on their SEC schedule starting with a rivalry match-up against their bitter enemy to the south: the Florida Gators.