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College football can be complicated with all that talk of cover 2s and cover 3s, all the wheel routes and chip blocks.

But if football seems confusing, don’t even bother asking what David Yancey did during his summer vacation.

Officially, the reserve tailback for the Tennessee Vols spent his summer measuring radioactive contamination through in situ gamma ray spectroscopy, or ISGRS, as part of the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education’s Independent Environmental Assessment and Verification program.

Translation: Yancey helped test a sophisticated radiation detector designed to find contaminated soil well below the surface that also can identify the specific type of radioactive material.

He even helped assemble an automotive engine to raise and lower the 400-pound device.

Hey, it all makes sense if you’re a nuclear engineering major.

And Yancey just so happens to be the first Tennessee football player to major in nuclear engineering since the 1950s.

"It’s extremely unusual," says Dan Carlson, an academic counselor with UT’s Thornton Athletics Student Life Center. "I wish it was more the norm and not the exception, not just here at Tennessee but everywhere."

The Vols have had their share of engineering majors.

Recently, Darwin Walker, a defensive tackle with the Philadelphia Eagles, is perhaps the most famous. Omari Hand, who played with the Jacksonville Jaguars, is back in school to complete his civil engineering degree.

Nathan Dougherty, a former UT player and member of the College Football Hall of Fame, later became dean of UT’s College of Engineering and is the namesake of one of UT’s engineering buildings.

Engineering and football are difficult. When it’s nuclear engineering, that just might be crazy.

"That might be the toughest major the university offers," Carlson said. "David didn’t go the easy route. He chose the hardest route he could do."

It’s the only one he wanted.

Yancey, a native of Norfolk, Va., said he first became interested in nuclear engineer because of his father’s work with nuclear reactors on submarines.

"I was good at science and math," Yancey said. "I kind of liked that stuff. I was interested in numbers and stuff like that."

And football.

At Granby High School, he was the team’s MVP as a freshman and gained more than 1,000 all-purpose yards as a senior.

As a sophomore at UT, Yancey rushed for 59 yards on 13 carries in the Vols’ victory over Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl.

This year, Yancey has played in all six games, running his career total to 23 games played, and is third on the team with two rushing touchdowns behind Arian Foster and Montario Hardesty.

Yancey’s schedule, though, is second to none.

On top of the demands of football meetings, practice and conditioning, he’s usually doing homework until midnight. It’s not unusual to see the 5-foot-8, 198-pound tailback with an open book on the team bus or plane flight home from a road game.

Yancey could probably minor in time management

"I would say that’s my biggest challenge so far," he says. "I just try to do something everyday, work a little each day on something so I won’t get too far behind."

Sound elementary? Not when you’re taking the classes Yancey is.

Nuclear reactor theory and differential equations were the toughest, he says.

His teammates make it out to be a little tougher, if that’s possible.

"They’ll make something up like, ‘Yancey’s majoring in bio-electronic chemistry,’ something crazy like that," he said. "I think they respect it and they look at me like it’s tough and it’s hard — some of them look at me like I’m crazy — but I get a lot of comments about it."

Try this one from Carlson: "He’s one of the most respected guys and looked-up-to guys on the football team. David does all the little things. You can’t help but respect a guy who does all the right things."

Even if what he’s doing is quite unusual.

Yancey said he asked his department head, H.L. Dodds, if any UT football players had ever majored in nuclear engineering.

The answer was that Yancey was the fourth, but the first in nearly 50 years.

"That was during the leather-helmet days," Yancey joked. "It’s been a while."

And it might be a while before nuclear engineering majors at UT have as strong a connection to the football team.

Yancey, who sees the same 20 or so faces in most of his classes, says football is a hot topic.

And, believe it or not, football and nuclear engineering have a common thread.

"Determination, focus, it takes a lot of hard work," he said. "It’s pretty similar."

Those three characteristics helped Yancey earn a scholarship in 2004 and again in August.

Once he finishes his degree, he plans to try for a job at a hospital or a nuclear facility, he says. If that doesn’t work out, he’ll come back to school for a master’s degree in business administration.

For now, though, Yancey’s just soaking it all in.

"It’s my last year here," he said. "I’m just trying to enjoy the experience, enjoy my teammates. I’m having a blast, man."

Drew Edwards covers University of Tennessee football. He may be reached at 865-342-6274.

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Yancey dreams of becoming nuclear engineer