Jon Gruden to headline 2025 Tennessee Football Coaches Clinic
After years of intense rumors and endless speculation, Jon Gruden will be heading to Knoxville later this year — just not as the Tennessee football coach.
The longtime NFL coach and former “Monday Night Football” analyst will headline the 2025 Tennessee Football Coaches Clinic on March 28-29, the university announced Wednesday.
Gruden, who began his coaching career as a graduate assistant for the Vols and coach Johnny Majors in the mid-1980s, was linked to the Tennessee job on multiple occasions over the years, most notably in 2012 and 2017 while he was working at ESPN.
As it turned out, there might have been something to those “Grumors” after all. Last November, Gruden said in an interview on the popular Barstool Sports podcast “Pardon My Take” that he nearly left his “Monday Night Football” gig to become the Vols coach, though he didn’t specify what year.
“My wife cheered at Tennessee,” Gruden said. “I love Tennessee. I was a graduate coach there, and I did talk to the athletic director. And I don’t look up to anybody more than I look up to Peyton Manning and Kenny Chesney. Those are two of my favorite Tennessee guys. And I was very interested in doing it.”
Much of Gruden’s coaching experience came in the NFL, where he was the head coach for the Oakland Raiders from 1998-2001, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 2002-08 and the Las Vegas Raiders from 2018-21. He led the Buccaneers to the franchise’s first NFL championship in 2003, when they blew out his former employer, the Raiders, 48-21 in the Super Bowl.
His head-coaching career ended ignominiously, when an NFL investigation into the franchise now known as the Washington Commanders uncovered emails from Gruden to then-general manager Bruce Allen that contained racist, misogynistic and homophobic slurs. Shortly after details of the emails were published by the New York Times in October 2021, Gruden resigned as the Raiders’ coach.
Gruden has since worked as a consultant for the New Orleans Saints and signed a multi-year deal with Barstool late last year.
Tennessee’s coaches clinic, which is open to high school and middle school coaches, will also include speaking appearances from Vols coach Josh Heupel and his 2025 coaching staff, as well as Mike Keith, who last month was named as the new radio play-by-play voice for Tennessee football and men’s basketball.
Those who attend the clinic will have the opportunity to watch the Vols’ spring practice on March 29.
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