Former Tennessee football coach Jeremy Pruitt has been hired as a physical education teacher and assistant coach at Plainview High School in his hometown of Rainsville, AL.com has confirmed.

Pruitt will also coach junior-high basketball, Plainview principal Chris Clark said. His hiring was approved by the DeKalb County Board of Education on Thursday morning, Clark said.

“He’s a hometown hero,” Clark said. “His kids have gone to school here. He’s a great teacher, he’s a great coach. He was the most-qualified person for the job. We’re lucky to have him.”

The 49-year-old Pruitt is a Plainview graduate, and twice previously served as an assistant football coach under his father Dale Pruitt. The elder Pruitt was hired for a third stint as the Bears’ head coach in 2022.

Jeremy Pruitt was fired as Tennessee’s head football coach in January 2021 amid an investigation into widespread NCAA violations. Earlier this month, the NCAA issued him a six-year show-cause penalty and a one-year suspension, making it virtually impossible to work in college athletics during that time (Pruitt has planned to appeal the sanctions).

Pruitt played defensive back at Alabama under Gene Stallings in the mid-1990s, and was a Crimson Tide assistant under Nick Saban from 2007-09 and 2016-17. He has also worked at Georgia, Florida State and West Alabama, in addition to high school assistant-coaching stints at Plainview, Fort Payne and Hoover.

It was as defensive coordinator at Hoover under Rush Propst that Pruitt first rose to prominence. He was featured on the MTV reality series “Two-A-Days” in 2006, and landed at Alabama as director of player development in 2007.

Pruitt was elevated to defensive backs coach in 2010 and returned to Alabama as defensive coordinator in 2016. After helping the Crimson Tide to the 2017 national championship, he was hired as head coach at Tennessee.

Pruitt’s Volunteers went 15-19 in three seasons prior to his firing shortly after the 2020 season ended. He spent the 2021 season as a defensive assistant coach with the NFL’s New York Giants, but has not worked in football since.

Pruitt’s wife, Casey, was also hired at Plainview last month as a reading/math intervention teacher.

News of Jeremy Pruitt’s hiring was first reported by Mountain Valley News on its Facebook page.