Tennessee the Biggest Winners of Summer College Football Recruiting

The Tennessee Volunteers should be considered the biggest winners of the summer recruiting period in college football.

Since the beginning of summer, a lot of moves have been made in the 2025 recruiting class and quite a few programs made some massive strides toward getting their class wrapped up before the season even starts. However, there might not be a program that made as many big waves as Tennessee did this summer on the recruiting trail.

Since the start of June, Tennessee has landed 13 commits in the class out of 23 total. It isn’t just the quantity though that makes the Volunteers stand out though, it’s the manner in which they won some of these recruiting battles and the caliber of players that they have landed over the last couple of months. Here is a recap of the players that have committed to Tennessee during that time period:

Let’s start with the biggest name in the class: David Sanders Jr. This is one of the most recent commits for the Volunteers and it was a massive victory for the program. Sanders is rated as the second-best player in the country and he chose Tennessee over Georgia, Nebraska and Ohio State. Tennessee survived a late push by Nebraska and separated itself from two major powerhouses in Georgia and Ohio State.

Lagonza Hayward, Christian Gass and Travis Smith all fall in the same category: Georgia kids who didn’t stay home. The Bulldogs were in the mix for all three of these athletes, but Tennessee came out on top for all three of them. It’s not often that Georgia isn’t able to hold onto prospects from their own roots, but the Volunteers not only went head to head with the Bulldogs, but they asserted themselves and won. Three major recruiting wins for the Volunteers.

Jaedon Harmon and Da’Saahn Brame are part of the final category that made the Volunteers stand out this offseason. Both Harmon and Brame were committed elsewhere until Tennessee swooped in and swayed them to come to Knoxville. Harmon was an Alabama commit until this past weekend when he announced he was flipping to Tennessee and Brame was committed to Oregon and then flipped his commitment to the Volunteers.

This list of players doesn’t even include the commitments of quarterback Faizon Brandon and tight end Carson Sneed who are part of the 2026 recruiting class and both committed to the Volunteers this summer. If head coach Josh Heupel and his staff were looking to make some waves this offseason and prove they belong with the other elite recruiters, then they certainly accomplished that.

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