Take Two: Can UT eventually get Cade Mays back in fold?

Take Two returns with a daily offering tackling a handful of issues in the college football landscape. Rivals.com National Recruiting Analyst Adam Gorney lays out the situation and then receives takes from Rivals.com National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell and a local expert from the Rivals.com network of team sites.

RELATED: Mays decommits from Tennessee

This is how bad it’s gotten for Tennessee.

Committed to the Volunteers since his sophomore year, five-star offensive tackle Cade Mays, the top-rated prospect in the state of Tennessee from Knoxville Catholic, backed off his pledge on Tuesday.

With the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the future of coach Butch Jones and Tennessee’s disappointing season, Mays has decided to explore other options - and he will have plenty.

Rated as the second-best offensive tackle in the class, Mays has already unofficially visited Clemson and Georgia. A trip to Ohio State is expected this weekend. Officials back to Clemson and Georgia along with Notre Dame could happen before another decision is made. The five-star is expected to be an early enrollee, too, which pushes up the recruiting calendar.

So these questions need to be asked: Is Tennessee completely out of this now?

If the Volunteers decide to move on from Jones and hire a coach Mays likes, could the Knoxville Catholic standout rejoin the class even though the decision timetable will be short?

And by not firing Jones earlier this season, possibly after blowout losses to Georgia or Alabama or a disappointing defeat to Kentucky or an ugly loss to South Carolina, did the Vols lose out on one the best in-state recruits in recent years, a kid who played his high school ball down the road from Tennessee’s campus?

“Everybody pretty much knows that Butch is going to get fired at this point and (Mays’) dad is an alum who lives there and is pretty dialed in. People expect a change to happen but it hasn’t happened and the longer it drags on the worse it will look for Tennessee.

“He told Tennessee a month or so ago that he was going to look around and take an approach to recruiting like he was not committed. The writing has been on the wall for a while and he finally had enough, he and his family. If they hire the right coach, the Vols should be heavily involved, but you never know because there’s not going to be much time between the point where they make a change and when he’s making a decision. We’re talking possibly a few weeks, so it’s going to be tight.”

“Firing Butch Jones after South Carolina or Alabama, unless they were able to announce a hire, would not have stopped Mays from looking around. The fact that Tennessee has become a running joke in college football, with everyone knowing Jones is going to be fired and the AD putting him out there every week to handle press conferences when everybody knows he’s gone, doesn’t help.

“I’m sure Cade Mays is hearing from other schools as well as friends and acquaintances, ‘Why are you going there? They’re a mess. They can’t figure their stuff out. They should have fired their coach weeks ago.’ Look at what Florida did. It was at least definitive in its action.

“It’s a combination, but I don’t think there was anything that would have stopped him from looking around. When you have a coaching situation, whether he’s fired or not, that is very tenuous, kids are going to look around.”