Photo via USA Today

Now-former ASA College (New York) head coach Joe Osovet - a repeat guest on host Keith Grabowski's Coach and Coordinator podcast - was hired as part of the new staff at the University of Tennessee.

RELATED LINK: [PODCAST] Coach and Coordinator: Joe Osovet (11/8/17)

Bruce Feldman of Sports Illustrated details Osovet's connection to Volunteers head coach Jeremy Pruitt, who hired Osovet as a quality control assistant last week.

Bye New York, Thanks for the memories 👏👏🖐🖐#Knoxville bound pic.twitter.com/bGa38Xalgw

— Joe Osovet (@CoachOsovet) February 18, 2018

From Feldman:

Joe Osovet first met Jeremy Pruitt when the new Tennessee head coach was the defensive coordinator at Georgia. Osovet, then the head coach at Nassau Community College in Long Island and had a gifted cornerback prospect, Rasul Douglas, who was getting a lot of interest. Douglas ended up at West Virginia, but the Juco coach with the thick New York accent and the SEC defensive coordinator hit it off. Both are the quintessential football grinders. Pruitt worked his way up from the high school ranks and joined Nick Saban’s first Alabama staff as the director of player development in 2007; Osovet, the son of a carpet salesman, has spent nearly two decades at the junior college level.

After he wrapped up a 9-1 season at ASA in December, Osovet received a call from Pruitt asking him to interview for the wide receivers coach opening. While he didn't get the job, Osovet made an impression during his interview, and Pruitt said they'd eventually work together.

RELATED CONTENT: Coach and Coordinator podcast: Joe Osovet (3/22/17)

Osovet didn't wait long, as he received the assistant's position offer last Tuesday.

"Whatever they need me to do, I’m just excited to be a piece of the puzzle and help us win football games in the SEC," he says. "We didn’t really touch on the specifics of it. I think I can bring something to the table from an offensive standpoint. Whatever it is, I’m just excited that I have this opportunity."

In implementing an offense that utilized a 90 percent RPO (run-pass option) attack, Osovet's teams made things tough on the opposition.

"Over the past six years, we put up 40-some points per game," he says. "In five games we put up 75 points or more. I’ve clinic-ed with Ohio State, Georgia Southern, Villanova. I think it’s pretty unique what we do. A lot of people do it horizontally. We do it more vertically from a [vertical] shot standpoint. I know now the term RPOs is taking the football world by storm, but we’ve been doing it since the early 2000s."