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Pearl optimistic he’ll ‘have the opportunity to coach again’

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Bruce Pearl’s unemployed and awaiting word from the NCAA on possible punishment related to his lying to NCAA investigators.

Yet he remains an optimist when it comes to his coaching future.

The former Tennessee coach 790 The Zone in Atlanta that he’s certain he’ll be back in the game. And if he hadn’t made a few foolish mistakes, he’d still be coaching the Vols.

“I do think that I’m going to have the opportunity to coach again,” Pearl told the station. “I’ve got to wait and see what the Committee on Infractions, what they say, probably coming up sometime in the middle of August and how quickly will they allow me to come back into coaching. That’s going to go a long way towards whether or not I do coach again.”

Pearl, who was fired in March, met recently with the NCAA’s Committee on Infractions and tried to present a solemn face to the group. The meeting didn’t help his mood, but did provide him with more insight to why he’s out of a job.

As he told the station, two falsely answered questions created most of the mess. Pearl says of the 150 questions he was asked, he honestly answered 148 of them.

That mistake still irks him.

“Do you want me to write the book about how do you lose $10 million jobs? I can write the book,” he told the radio station. “How can you be so dumb and so careless? ... It’s not so much about what we did, it’s about how we handled it.

You also can follow me on Twitter @MikeMillerNBC.