Ex-Alabama DC Takes Legal Action as NCAA Case Clouds Coaching Future

Credits: IMAGO ©Credits: IMAGO

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.