There was plenty said about the past and the future of several SEC squads on Thursday, with the Tennessee Volunteers and Alabama Crimson Tide having the most interesting news bites taking center stage.
For the Vols, Butch Jones opened up about his coaching tenure on Rocky Top from 2013 to 2017. For the Tide, there are very real worries about the future of the program with how poorly their 2027 cycle is going so far.
Here are your latest gridiron headlines from the SEC yesterday, including recruiting wins from across the conference:
Butch Jones talks Tennessee tenure, hints Jon Gruden gave him advice
During an appearance on Andy & Ari On3, Jones revealed sage advice given to him by a former NFL head coach with Tennessee ties: "There's a prominent head football coach, former head coach in the NFL, with Tennessee ties and he knew exactly what we had to do and how we had to recruit our way out of it. ... He said, Butch, you just got to build it Brick by Brick."
Most speculated this was a reference to Jon Gruden, who met his wife when she was a Vols cheerleader and owns land in Jefferson County, TN. Gruden was oftentimes connected to the Tennessee job, but never went for it.
Jones' career in Knoxville was solid, if unspectacular. If there were McDonald's bags with a bag inside for recruits -- bagception, if you will, in the pre-actual-NIL under-the-table NIL era -- then those years were rather disappointing. Jones cooked on the recruiting trail, but went 0-5 against Nick Saban's Alabama teams. The Vols won plenty of bowl games, but they weren't New Year's Six bowls.
Jones never truly put it together, but he did seem to build it brick by brick after taking on a program during a stretch not too dissimilar to the Auburn Tigers' current five-year malaise. It's too bad Jeremy Pruitt seemingly knocked many of those bricks down in the years that followed.
CBS Sports pushes the panic button on Alabama's 2027 recruiting class
CBS Sports' Cody Nagel is very worried about the Crimson Tide's 2027 recruiting class right now. Specifically, Nagel is worried this poor class isn't the typical early-woes fake-out that usually becomes a top-ranked Alabama recruiting class.
"It feels like we do this every summer: point out Alabama's surprisingly low recruiting ranking in June, wonder if the sky is falling, then watch the Crimson Tide finish in the top five anyway. But maybe -- maybe -- this is the year some mild panic is justified," Nagel wrote. "Yes, Alabama still has just 11 commits with the end of June approaching, and low volume has long been part of the Tide's recruiting strategy. The bigger concern is quality.
"The usual late surge may still come, but for now, this class looks far less Alabama-like than we're used to seeing."
The Crimson Tide doesn't need the best 2027 class because of the retention of the 2025 class and the depth of the 2026 class. Still, Alabama finishing that low could only be justified by a massive portal haul that Kalen DeBoer doesn't seem capable of.
Texas, South Carolina, and Kentucky score big recruiting wins
The Texas Longhorns nabbed two recruits for their next two classes on Thursday: 4-star 2028 American Heritage (FL) quarterback Neimann Lawrence and 3-star 2027 Orange Lutheran IOL Lucas Rhoa.
4-star North Oconee (GA) corner Kelvin Millington committed to the South Carolina Gamecocks' 2027 class.
The Kentucky Wildcats landed 4-star Warren Central (IN) linebacker Sean Fox to their 2027 class.
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