Peerless Price predicts Tennessee will soon be in College Football Playoff

Tennessee Volunteers legend Peerless Price thinks his Vols will be in the College Football Playoff by 2023. Should he be this bullish on Tennessee football?

SEC legend Peerless Price loves his Tennessee Volunteers.

Why would he not? Price won a national title playing for Phillip Fulmer in Knoxville back in 1998. After that, he carved out a solid nine-year NFL career with three teams, predominantly the Buffalo Bills.

Though it has been a decade-plus since Tennessee was nationally relevant for the right reasons, Price is bullish on his Vols getting back to the College Football Playoff in the near future. Price appeared on The Paul Finebaum Show on Friday to talk some Tennessee football with show’s host who shares the same alma mater as him. What Price revealed was shocking, to say the least.

“I think once this 2021 (recruiting) class becomes juniors, we’ll be in the college football playoffs and competing for national titles,” said Price to Finebaum. Price is ecstatic on the marvelous job head coach Jeremy Pruitt is doing on the recruiting trails in his third season at Tennessee. While it has been the underrated story of the spring, should the Vols’ SEC rivals be worried about them?

Well, the oddsmakers don’t think Tennessee will be much of a threat in the SEC this year. They view Tennessee as a pretender in the SEC East this year at 40/1 odds to win the conference. This puts them middle of the pack in the SEC behind the likes of rival teams Alabama (5/4), Georgia (7/2) and Florida (4/1). Texas A&M (10/1), LSU (12/1) and Auburn (14/1) are also ahead of them.

While that’s all true, what Price is referring to is the great 2021 recruiting class Pruitt is putting together. According to 247Sports, it’s the No. 2 class in the country behind only the Ohio State Buckeyes. If this class taps into all the potential Price sees in it, Tennessee could be a dominating team by 2023, but how will they stack up in the SEC four years from now?

Nick Saban may still be coaching at Alabama, or he may have retired. While some might suggest former Alabama wide receiver Dabo Swinney to be his successor, that’s not a winnable situation for Swinney to enter, given his tremendous success at Clemson. Replacing Saban will be difficult, but what if Pruitt goes back to his alma mater? He’d be a serious candidate to replace him for sure.

But let’s not go down that wormhole now. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say Pruitt coaches at Tennessee for over a decade, just like Fulmer did before him. Tennessee can close the gap between Florida and Georgia in the SEC East, separating from the rest of the division. The problem is Georgia isn’t going anywhere under Kirby Smart. Florida looks fantastic under Dan Mullen.

Very rarely has the SEC East had all three traditional powers humming at the same time. Georgia was down in the 1990s, Tennessee has been down since 2007 and Florida has had periods of both good and bad football. Ultimately, it comes down to two things and only two things: Recruiting and coaching.

Smart and Pruitt are strong recruiters, while Mullen is getting better now that he’s back at Florida. Smart has led his program to the College Football Playoff, won the SEC and his division three times in four years. Mullen is arguably the greatest coach in Mississippi State history and has turned Florida around in only two years. Pruitt is a little green as a head coach but is trending up.

Because Tennessee does not have as much high-end in-state football talent as Florida or Georgia, Pruitt will have to recruit even harder to keep pace. He must dominate in Memphis and poach top players from other major metro areas outside of the Volunteer State. If he can string together multiple consecutive top-10 recruiting classes, maybe Tennessee can vie for the playoff soon?

Ultimately, Price’s comments on Pruitt and Tennessee’s bright future are not outrageous. We really don’t know what the SEC will look like four years from now. Though we should expect Florida and Georgia to be perennial playoff contenders, maybe one of them will regress? Tennessee can get to their level, but might only end up looking like Auburn does in the SEC West.

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