Oak Ridge tied in, Malik Howard, has committed to the University of Tennessee, and well, this is one that you had to have.

You are locked on balls, your daily podcast on the Tennessee Volunteers, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day.

What's up, everybody?

It's a special edition of Lockdown Falls.

I am your host, Eric Kane.

We are breaking down the commitment of four-star tight-in Malik Howard to the University of Tennessee.

We're going to take a look at what the tight-in room looks like now with the rest of the class of 2027 so far looks like now how important

it is to have local players stay local when they're deserving and all that more right here

in terms of the malik howard commitment for the university of tennessee this episode is presented

by the great people over fandal sports sports book talking too fast where new customers can bet just $5 and get $150 in bonus bets with your first bet when your first bet wins. Head on over to fandler.com to go ahead and get started today. I'm your host, Eric Kane. Really appreciate you guys for being here, and this is a prospect that we've talked about for quite some time. If you're an everydayer, we do thank you.

If you are a frequent visitor of the show, maybe once a week, maybe a couple times a month, still thank you.

You've probably heard me talk over the course of the last couple of months about Malik Howard.

He is one of these building blocks in the class of 2027 for the University of Tennessee.

Now, he is a local prospect, and there have been

cases where local prospects have not panned out, where, you know, all the local Knoxville residents,

Knox County, East Tennessee residents, you know, or Tennessee in general are just really rooting

for the local guy and said, well, he deserves to get a shot. He deserves to get a shot. And sometimes

they do and it doesn't pan out. Sometimes they do and it does pan out. Most recently, hello Deshaun Bishop. But you got Zayton Anderson that's in the class now, or, you know, he's on campus now. He was in the class prior. And there's been other, you know, Warren a couple of years ago. You know, it was a really good tie-in for Tennessee. Jacob Warren for quite some time. He was from Farragut. Allie Lane produced here, you know, he played at Gibbs. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. Back when I was in high school, Byron Young, not Byron Young, excuse me. Oh, gosh, I'm forgetting his name right now. The wide receiver part return to Kevin Young, there we go. You know, he got a taste of

the action with Tennessee. So again, you know, keeping the local prospects here is very important

because we've seen situations where they go away and it's really, really tough to navigate.

Like, why aren't they at Tennessee at T. Higgins, talking about Oak Ridge here with Moll Malik Howard. T. Higgins, most notable, you know, goes and, you know, has a fantastic career and then is off to the NFL. And if you dial it all the way back and you want to look at Randall Cobb. And I know there were some situations there in terms of position battles and all that, you know, back when Coach Former was here., you know, he played it out Coe and went on to Kentucky. And then, of course,

the rest of history, he had a great NFL career. So it's always good when you see local prospects stay and hopefully he'll produce. And I think the sky's the limit for a guy like Malik Howard.

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