A legal victory meant to salvage his career has instead become a liability for former Alabama DC Jeremy Pruitt. He is now taking the bizarre step of asking a court to reverse his win against the NCAA.
As per Mike Rodak of Bama247, Pruitt has asked a court to dissolve the preliminary injury he won against the NCAA in December. Over the last four months, the injunction “has not had the desired effect.” To make matters worse, it is causing more confusion around “Coach Pruitt’s employability and the possibility of NCAA retribution if and when the injunction is ultimately lifted.”
Two years into his six-year show-cause ban by the NCAA, Pruitt returned to a college football team in October 2025, after the Jackson State Gamecocks and coach Charles Kelly, his former colleague, wrote to the NCAA expressing their intent to hire the Alabama native.
The Gamecocks stated the financial rationale behind the experienced 51-year-old joining them as a lifetime opportunity, since “the best football programs in the country, and indeed most schools in the Southeastern Conference, would have already hired Mr. Pruitt as their defensive coordinator.”
In response, the NCAA approved his joining the Gamecocks as an analyst but restricted him from joining any other college football team under its rules.
Alongside other restrictions, such as his disqualification from recruiting, Pruitt was prohibited from attending games in person for the remainder of the 2025 season. The Gamecocks were also ordered to implement a robust monitoring program involving compliance staff, the head coach, the athletic director, and the university president.
Believing the ban was the product of a conspiracy between the Vols and the NCAA, Pruitt filed a $100 million lawsuit to clear his name and get back into coaching. As a result, in December, a DeKalb County judge granted him a temporary injunction against the NCAA until the case was ultimately settled, citing that the ban would have caused him so much unfair loss in the event the court proceeding eventually favored him.
However, if the NCAA wins the case, he would be made to immediately resign from whatever role he occupies in any college football team.
“The hardship—if any—imposed on the NCAA by the injunction does not unreasonably outweigh the benefit to Pruitt by the granting of the injunction,” Judge Andrew J. Hairston wrote in his order.
“The NCAA will continue its business as usual, suffering no immediate harm. Alternatively, Pruitt, if he were successful on the merits of his case, would suffer substantial harm during the pendency of the case. This balancing of the hardships favors Pruitt.”
The NCAA responded with an appeal that “had been awaiting a hearing in front of the Alabama Supreme Court on the NCAA’s appeal of the injunction.”
In a shocking turn of events, Pruitt himself is now requesting that the injunction be dissolved, as it has changed nothing about his employment status since it was granted.
It did not give football teams the assurance they needed to hire him, as there is a significant possibility that he would lose the case at any point and would have to step down from any role he is occupying at the time.
While he was the head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers, Pruitt was the subject of an internal investigation that found him guilty of recruiting violations. What followed was his firing from his role at Tennessee in 2021.
A year later, the NCAA dug deep into the matter and discovered that he, his wife, and some members of the football staff provided about $60,000 in “impermissible benefits and recruiting inducements to more than two dozen recruits and their families.” As a result, he received a six-year show-cause ban from 2023 to 2029 as his punishment.
Following his exit from Tennessee, he had stints as the New York Giants’ defensive assistant in 2021 and as a physical education teacher and junior high boys’ basketball coach at his alma mater, Plainview High School, in 2023.