Seven days from the start of game week, first-year head coach Jeremy Pruitt rolls into his office on Sunday morning blurry-eyed and busy.

Tennessee's new head coach had a late night of rewatching his team's second scrimmage of the preseason and Pruitt has already spent the morning working the phones, as recruiting never stops. As he parks his Ford F-150 in the parking lot adjacent to the Anderson Training Center, Pruitt's first thought Sundays is whether or not Smokey's Cafe is still serving breakfast. There’s no time for lunch today, with a 1 p.m. marathon staff meeting scheduled to evaluate the scrimmage and make key decisions for the final week of camp. Before the meeting, Pruitt makes a football exception as he agrees to sit down with Volquest for an exclusive interview about his first nine months on the job, fall camp, and being a first-time head coach.

In 25 years of covering the Vols, Pruitt is the fifth head coach that I have covered. It just so happens he’s also Tennessee’s fifth head coach in the last decade. Getting to know head coaches has become a job requirement if you cover the Big Orange, and all summer long people have asked what is Pruitt like? Can he win? My response has been simple and consistent with both questions: Jeremy Pruitt is about ball. Fast forward to Sunday, some 13 days before his first game as a head coach, and I was reminded of how simple Pruitt is. And being simple is a compliment. Admittedly, I find it curious that Pruitt is going to call his own defense. Others have had the same thought. So I wondered who had Pruitt consulted about his decision. A simple question that brought a simple and clear answer. “I’m going to call the plays on gameday,” Pruitt said, matter of factly leaning back in his chair. “If I can't call the plays, I'm going to quit coaching. That was a no- brainer. I like to coach the defensive backs. I like to be involved in the game-planning and I like to call the defense. I would like to call the offense to if I could.” In other words, Jeremy Pruitt likes to be in control. He likes to be in charge. In visiting with Pruitt, it's not an ego stroke to be the “head man,", but being in charge mean the success or failure ultimately falls on him. That's a proposition that he seems very comfortable with, too. “You really have an opportunity to control the entire organization,” Pruitt replied when asked what he enjoyed most about being a head coach. “One thing that comes about, and probably with any organization, the person in charge sets the tempo, controls the message, has to be able to be a leader fo anyone in the program. As an assistant coach you rely on eveyone else to do their job. That goes always the way from the on the field coaches to the nutrionist to the weight room, and recruiting. There's a lot involved with it. So being a head coach, you are setting a plan, organizing it and seeing it through.”