- Jeremy Pruitt is an American football coach who most recently was a senior defensive assistant for the New York Giants of the National Football League (NFL).
Jeremy Pruitt’s wife, Casey East, avoided the show-cause penalty by the NCAA investigation. Pruitt and his staffers were fired by Tennessee in 2021.
The former head coach of the University of Tennessee, Jeremy Pruitt, has received a six-year show-cause penalty for his involvement in recruiting the players.
The University has been fined $8 million and put on five years probation. It also faces a reduction in scholarships. This is the largest financial penalty levied by the NCAA in its history.
But due to this penalty, Tennessee avoids facing a ban in the 2023 and 2024 postseasons. Not only Jeremy but his wife, Casey, also faced charges.
In the investigation concluded on Friday, NCAA decided Casey would not face any show-clause penalty. The violations were committed under Pruitt’s watch from 2018 to early 2021.
Jeremy Pruitt Wife, Casey East
Jeremy Pruitt’s wife, Casey East, is a native of south Alabama and previously worked at Florida State University.
Casey East is a first-generation graduate of her family and has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English from Troy University. While earning her B.A. from Troy, Casey also worked as a graduate assistant in compliance in the athletic department.
In her interview with VIP Knoxville in 2018, Casey said she fell in love with athletics and compliance while working at Troy. She later joined the same position at the Univeristy of Oklahoma and worked there for two seasons.
Casey then joined Florida State in 2013, the same year she met her husband, Jeremy Pruitt. Jeremy had joined Florida State as a defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach.
The two soon hit off, and the former Tennessee coach was quick to impress his future father-in-law by talking about football. The two tied the knot in 2014, and soon after her wedding, Casey quit her job.
In her interview, Casey claimed if both of them worked in athletics, they couldn’t have a stable family life, so she quit her job.
The couple is a parent to three boys, Ridge, Flynt, and Jayse, and a baby girl, Shelby. Jayse is Jeremy’s son from a previous relationship.
The couple’s older son, Ridge, was previously diagnosed with autism, and Casey had previously talked about it in her interview with East Tennessee Times.
Casey said both she and Jeremy had recognized there was a delay of some sort in their son. So, Casey became proactive and took her son to therapies geared toward kids.
Jeremy Pruitt NCAA Recruiting Scandal
Jeremy Pruitt’s NCAA recruiting scandal is a three-year investigation that finally gained closure on Friday.
The highly talked about scandal had more than 200 individual infractions resulting in 18 Level I violations. Pruitt and several of his Volunteers staff were charged with the violations involving 29 recruits and their families.
The NCAA found out that Pruitt, Casey, and numerous coaches provided almost $60,000 of cash or gifts to UT recruits, players, and their families.
Jeremy received a six-year show-cause penalty, but Casey walked out free from the court. She avoided a penalty for her part in the NCAA recruiting scandal.
Previously, NCAA had said Casey paid $12,500 in cash car payments to an unnamed Tennessee player and his mother from September 2018 to March 2021.
She was also accused of arranging for a real estate agent to meet with a recruit’s family. But these cases weren’t strong enough to put any show-cause penalty on Casey.
The show-cause penalty means that if an NCAA member school tries to hire Pruitt in an athletic position before July 13, 2029, he would be suspended from all team activities for the entirety of the first season.
But there have been few people who have shown their sympathy to Pruitt. VolQuest’s Brent Hubbs and On3’s Andy Staples touched on this topic.
They said the former Tennessee coach stood up for the current players on the court. According to Hubb, Jeremy requested the committee not to take any action against the current players on the team as they had nothing to do with his situation.
