Butch Jones has gotten a lot of credit for his recruiting efforts, as well he should. Tennessee is a state that based on college football tradition one would think is a recruiting hot spot, but the numbers will show you that it's really not that successful. Tennessee coaches have had to go across state borders more than the average Tennessee fan would believe to find great players. This past years class may have started a change in this with Derek Barnett, Jalen Hurd, and Aaron Medley. I did not count any class that has not had a chance to be drafted yet in this article. So, the numbers are only for 2002 thru 2011. I used recruiting stars, games started and if they were drafted or not as a way to judge the classes. I know games started is not a perfect example of how much a player contributed, for example Gerald Riggs only started 3 games, but he was a big contributor.



First, let's talk about where the recruits are from: I broke this down into 5 major cities: Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Johnson City, and Memphis.







It makes Butch's job a little harder being that Memphis is actually much closer to Oxford then it is Knoxville.



The average star rating for the classes is 3.35. The number of Rival's star ratings look like this:

2 Stars 3 Stars 4 Stars 5 Stars 7 26 24 2

Finally looking at games started from these players. I know that this is not a perfect example of how good a player is, but generally if a player is contributing a lot he will get the start.



Through 2011 there were 59 Players from Tennessee in classes. Those players started a combined 583 games (perUTSports.com). That's an average of each player starting 9.88 games in their career. I did count players that were kicked off the team or transferred, because technically Tennessee recruited and signed them. For instance, Lee Smith from Powell started 0 games but ended up drafted out of Marshall.

The highest number of starts went to Britton Colquitt with 43 and second was James Wilhoit with 37. The highest position player when to James Stone with 39 and Dan Williams was right behind with 32.

The final stat I compiled was if the player was drafted or not which also indicates how productive a player is unlike the NBA which could draft a player solely on potential. 7 Players have been drafted out of those classes. They are as follows:

PLAYER ROUND Justin Harrell 1st Brad Cottam 3rd Dan Williams 1st Jacques Mcclendon 4th Lee Smith (Marshall) 5th BJ Coleman (UTC) 7th Montori Hughes (UT Martin) 5th

Out of the 7 players drafted 3 were either 2 or 3 stars. With only 7 players drafted I started to look at NFL players from the state of Tennessee and the two that jump out are Patrick Willis and Randall Cobb. Other than that I'm not sure there is a lot of players that Tennessee just missed on.

Hopefully for Butch and the Vols sake, the area players have started improving. It seems like the Nashville area has made huge strides lately. That will really help the Vols, since you know, the Vols own Nashville too.