File this in the category of least surprising offseason news in a college football summer that has been full of twists and turns: Chaz Coleman is no longer part of the Tennessee football program.
As first reported by On3, Coleman was “medically disqualified”, which theoretically would make it difficult if not impossible for him to jump immediately to another program and play.
And so it goes for Coleman, who arrived from Penn State via the portal as one of the top-rated overall players available in the transfer market earlier this year. He missed the latter half of spring practice and all of summer workouts to date. Other media outlets, including CBS Sports, have reported Coleman was dealing with a variety of issues, including “lingering vertigo symptoms connected to a head injury suffered at an unknown point during his time at Penn State.”
We won’t speculate on the reasons, but considering the hype surrounding Coleman and his exit from the Vols without playing a single snap, he goes down as one of the biggest recruiting busts in Tennessee football history.
Who are some of the others? So glad you asked. This week on the Friday 5, we look at five of the greatest recruiting busts for the Vols.
1: Bryce Brown
Brown was considered the crown jewel in the lone recruiting class assembled by Lane Kiffin. He was rated the No. 1 prospect in the nation by Rivals in 2009. Like Kiffin, Brown’s brief tenure in Knoxville was surrounded by controversy. Questions surrounded whether Brown had maintained his amateur eligibility (isn’t that a quaint concept in this era of NIL?) up until the final weeks of the 2009 preseason. Brown spent the ’09 campaign as the second-string running back behind Montario Hardesty, racking up 460 yards with three touchdowns. Then, after Kiffin left for USC, Brown transferred to Kansas State.
2: Boo Carter
The hype surrounding Carter, a product of the Chattanooga area, was real. Vol fans were thrilled at the potential two-way impact of Carter, rated by Rivals as the top prospect in the state of Tennessee in the class of 2024. After earning all-freshman honors in the Southeastern Conference in 2024, Carter’s relationship with the Vols turned south. He missed some team activities, then was absent altogether for the November cupcake game with New Mexico State. A few days later, Carter announced he was going into the transfer portal. He’s now with Colorado, playing for Deion Sanders.
3: Kenny O’Neal
It’s all right if you don’t remember O’Neal, who did nothing to distinguish himself during his time at Tennessee. Rated as high as the No. 8 receiver prospect in the nation, O’Neal signed with Florida State out of high school. He spent two years at FSU, then a year in junior college, and was considered one of the top players in a ballyhooed 2007 signing class that included College Football Hall of Famer Eric Berry. All that hype, and O’Neal made two catches in 2007, and was gone by 2008.
4: Harrison Bailey
One of the top pro-style quarterbacks in the class of 2020, Bailey was a fan favorite quarterback, based on the number of commenters on message boards and callers to radio shows for the entirety of his tenure at Tennessee lobbying for him to play. That was, at least, until a guy named Hendon Hooker emerged as QB1 for the Vols in 2021 – Josh Heupel’s first season in charge. By the time the 2021 campaign wrapped up, Bailey already had entered the portal. He made the rounds, jumping to UNLV, then Louisville, then Florida last year. Bailey did not play at all for the Gators in 2025 as his eligibility ran out.
5: Chaz Coleman
Of course Coleman makes the list. He received a huge amount of notoriety in the transfer portal market, despite just logging 144 total snaps as a true freshman at Penn State last year. He made the most of his limited playing time: three tackles for loss among eight total stops, a strip sack, two fumble recoveries, and 12 quarterback pressures. Another team surely will take a chance on Coleman. Time will tell which team makes that move.