Austin Thomas

Austin Thomas is leaving LSU to join Tennessee's staff under new coach Jeremy Pruitt, sources close to the situation told 247Sports on Wednesday.

As the general manager for the Tigers, the Tennessee native was involved in nearly every aspect of the Tigers' program from recruiting and player personnel to football operations and working alongside the coaching staff.

Thomas is expected to serve in a similar role on Pruitt's initial staff with at Tennessee, and his addition must be considered a coup for the new coach of the Vols.

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Though he has no direct ties to Pruitt, Thomas has crossed paths with Tennessee's new coach on the recruiting trail and does have a tie to the former Hall of Fame coach now sitting in the top spot in the Vols' athletic director.

Thomas has been at LSU for nearly five years. He joined the Tigers' staff in April 2013 — LSU re-hired him last year after he spent three months at USC — and helped assemble recruiting classes ranked second, fifth and second nationally in 2014, 2015 and 2016. In 2017, the Tigers plucked the No. 2- (JaCoby Stevens) and No. 4-ranked (Jacob Phillips) players in the state of Tennessee.

When the Tigers made interim coach Ed Orgeron their full-time head coach last November, Thomas was promoted to general manager, where he is an influential and integral part of LSU's recruiting operation.

Thomas "leads the way in the oversight and management of the entire LSU football program" and is "one of the top personnel managers in all of college football," according to his bio on LSU's official website.

Part of his role with the Tigers includes working with NFL personnel to aid LSU's players at the next level.

His salary at LSU was $125,000, according to Ross Dellenger of the The Advocate in Baton Rouge.

A Nashville-area native, Thomas completed his undergraduate education at Lipscomb before earning a master's degree in sport management at Tennessee.

Thomas began his career in college football as a recruiting intern with the Vols as a recruiting intern in 2008 when Phillip Fulmer, now Tennessee's athletic director, was the head coach and remained on Lane Kiffin's staff, serving as a defensive assistant alongside Orgeron and former LSU assistant and current Texas-San Antonio head coach Frank Wilson, until May 2010.

He then rejoined Lane and Monte Kiffin's staff at USC, where he was a defensive and recruiting assistant for a little less than a year. Thomas then moved into operations in April 2011. A year later he was promoted to assistant director of operations/recruiting a year later and remained in that role for nearly two years.

Dave Clawson and Bowling Green briefly hired Thomas as its director of recruiting and player personnel in 2013 before he left for LSU.

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