Welcome in to the GoVals 24-7 podcast, a breaking news edition of the podcast because Tennessee football, Ryan Callahan, has landed a significant in-state commitment.

That's right.

Four-star tight-in, Malik Howard, a top 247 prospect out of Oak Ridge High School just down the road from Knoxville has committed to Tennessee.

Huge pickup here for the Vols. Longtime Target picked up an offer from Tennessee about two years ago

and has been on campus, as you might imagine, for a local prospect, a number of times since then, you know, Tennessee, you know, getting the first official visit and

able to get this one across the finish line in a recruitment that seemed to be recently

inching toward a conclusion and looked like it was on a pretty accelerated timeline.

And that turned out to be the case.

So beating out some major competition for him. The other

major contenders in the end were Notre Dame and Oregon. Alabama was also in line to get an

official visit before he ended up canceling that one the weekend of May 29. So nice recruiting win here

for Tennessee and obviously addresses a need that Tennessee you know, Tennessee has continued to stack

talent at the tight-in position. They got obviously a couple big-time prospects in recent years

in Ethan Davis and Desaun Brame, even a nice international prospect last year in Luca Wolf.

And now this gives you another highly ranked prospect to come in next year and give you another real weapon in the passing game.

If he turns into the player down the road that you think he's capable of being and certainly the player that he's been in high school.

So really nice win here for Tennessee and Alec Ablin, the tight-ins coach put a ton of time and effort into this one over the past two years.

So Tennessee getting it done and in a really good year in the state of Tennessee,

this is one of the guys that you circled early on and said, Tennessee's got to win that one.

There's some other recruitments that are a little more challenging in state sometimes.

And this year is one of those times where maybe in the midstate, maybe in Memphis, you don't always win every single battle. A kid like this growing up in Oak Ridge, you've got to find a way to keep that one home and give Tennessee credit for getting it done and landing a highly ranked tight end that's going to be, you know, already is one of the highest-ranked players in their class, and it's going to remain, I think, one of the in-state stars in this class when it's all

sudden done. Why was Tennessee able to get it done? Because it sounds like although he was 40 minutes

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