Arron Sears made his decision and made it pay off. He wanted a chance to go out in style.

After some serious soul searching, he put NFL dreams on hold for his final season at the University of Tennessee.

Now it's reward time.

UT's senior offensive tackle was named the Jacobs Award winner as the SEC's top offensive lineman on Wednesday.

"It's one of the best decisions I've ever made," Sears said of coming back for his senior season. "Any decision I make, I usually don't look back on it and this is one I definitely won't look back on.

"I'm glad I came back. We didn't go undefeated, but we still had a good year."

Especially Sears.

He helped erase memories of last season's 5-6 record while raising his draft stock at the same time.

"We've got one more game (Outback Bowl on Jan. 1 against Penn State)," Sears said. "We've got something to prove until the final bell."

The Russellville, Ala., native became UT's 18th overall Jacobs winner, the 13th different Vol to claim the award.

"This is a well-deserved honor for Arron," UT coach Phillip Fulmer said in a release. "I'm very excited. To me, this is certainly the top honor for a lineman in the Southeast and one of the top honors in the nation."

All Sears had to do was look at the history of past UT winners to realize he was in good company.

"It's just amazing," he said. "You go into the sports complex and see all those people on the wall.

"I guess it was 1990 the last time we won it (Antone Davis), so it's a great accomplishment."

Chip Kell, inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame on Tuesday, was a two-time Jacobs winner in 1969 and 1970.

Besides Davis and Kell, other UT winners were: Sam Bartholomew (1938, 1939), Billy Bevis (1944, 1945), Jimmy Hahn (1951), John Michels (1952), Stockton Adkins (1956, 1957), Jim Cartwright (1959, 1960), Hal Wantland (1965), Bob Johnson (1967), Harry Galbreath (1987) and Eric Still (1989).

"He's a guy that decided to come back for his senior year and then proceeded to get himself ready for a great senior season," UT offensive coordinator Greg Adkins said of Sears.

"He works very hard in the weight room, has stayed relatively healthy it all has paid off with these individual awards he has received."

The American Football Coaches Association already named Sears a first-team All-American while coaches and the Associated Press made him a consensus first-team All-SEC player.

Now his thoughts are on recovering from a season of bumps and bruises and on Penn State.

"I feel great," he said. "We had a team run today and everybody was out there flying around like it was the beginning of the season.

"This is going to let a lot of guys get back to 100 percent or as close to 100 percent as possible. Penn State's just a great team to play against because of all the history and tradition."