Why Gray picked the Vols
Running back ‘just fell in love’ after campus visit
KNOXVILLE— Blowout losses are almost never a positive sign.
In college football, it can hurt a team’s morale and a coaching staff’s recruiting efforts.
Running back Eric Gray was in attendance for his official visit to see Tennessee’s 47-21 loss to Florida on
Sept. 22, 2018, the fourth game of coach Jeremy Pruitt’s first year with the Vols.
The loss dropped Tennessee to a 2-2 overall record.
But Gray, a four-star prospect from Memphis who was committed to Michigan at the time, saw promise in his time spent with Pruitt and the rest of the coaching staff.
On “The Slice,” a Tennessee football podcast hosted by VFL Films’ Kasey Funderburg, Gray revealed he returned home and told his father he wanted to flip his commitment to the Vols.
“I just fell in love,” Gray said. “I didn’t tell anyone else, I told my dad and I told my mom, I’m definitely going to Tennessee. The game wasn’t even close but I saw something at that game that was just like, this is it. This is the place.”
Gray said that the lure to be part of a rebuilding process was difficult to turn down.
He equated Tennessee’s situation to that of his prep years at Lausanne Collegiate School.
When he joined Lausanne in 2016, the school’s football program had only existed for five years and had only one appearance in the state playoffs.
Gray made an immediate impact, leading the Lynx to a state championship and winning the Division II-AA Mr. Football award. Lausanne repeated as state champions in 2017, and Gray was named Mr. Football for the third total time in his career.
“I didn’t want to go to a big-name program where you’re just another guy who played on the 2020 team,” said Gray, who is the TSSAA state record holder for most career touchdowns with 138.
“I wanted to leave something that’s going to mean something 20 years from now for my kids or something like that. That’s kind of what I looked at, and
when I went to the Tennessee game I saw that.”
On Dec. 1, 2018, Gray officially backed off of his pledge to Michigan. He did not make his commitment to Tennessee publicly known until the early signing period on Dec. 20.
Gray joined the Vols as an early enrollee in Jan. 2019 and made an immediate impact in his freshman season.
In a win over Vanderbilt on Nov. 30, he had 246 rushing yards, the most by a freshman in program history, and his three touchdowns, anchored by a 94yard touchdown run, the second-longest rushing touchdown in school history.
Gray also played a pivotal role in Tennessee’s 23-22 win over Indiana in the Taxslayer Gator Bowl, recovering an onside kick and then scoring the decisive touchdown a few plays later in the fourth quarter.
He was named CO-MVP.
“Towards the end of the season, I was hot,” Gray said.
“It was pretty good. I think we have a lot more to accomplish. I think we have a lot more to do. But the freshman season was a good icebreaker.”