If Todd Kelly had had it his way, he would have been a major league baseball player.

But thanks to the advice from his mom, dad and former Tennessee head coach Johnny Majors, the former Vols defensive end ended up on the football field.

It was the spring of 1990 and Kelly was planning on playing for UT in baseball. He would have been one of the biggest first basemen the Diamond Vols had ever seen. His resume was impressive after being named all-state in high school in Hampton, Virginia.

"I played against Ken Griffey, Jr. and former Braves outfielder Brian Jordan in AAU ball growing up," Kelly said.

"Coming out of high school I was an 11th-round pick of the Detroit Tigers. They offered me $70,000 to sign, but my parents said it was more important that I get a college degree. So, I signed with Tennessee to play football, but planned on playing baseball too," Kelly said.

So there Kelly was heading out to Lindsey Nelson Stadium to start baseball workouts when head football coach Johnny Majors called him into his office.

"He told me that we had just signed two JUCO defensive ends, Chuck Smith and Chris Mims,'' Kelly said. "He said that if I played baseball I would never see the field in football, so I stuck with football.

"Looking back at it all, I wish I'd done what I wanted to do and played baseball. Don't get me wrong, I loved football. But, I could have been a great baseball player. Every time I go home to Hampton, people tell me that I should have stuck with baseball."

Don't feel sorry for Kelly, though. His football career was something to write home about. Todd ranks third on Tennessee's all-time list for tackles for a loss in a season. Todd rang up 21 of them in his senior season of 1992.

"The game I remember in the 1992 season was the Florida game," Kelly said. The 14th ranked Vols beat the fourth-ranked Gators, 31-14.

"They had an offensive lineman who had talked a bunch of trash that week," Kelly said. "All I did was have the game of my life with two sacks and five quarterback hits."

Kelly said he started his post big-play ritual of shooting guns that day.

"I don't know how it started," he said. "I was so keyed up, I guess I just kind of made it up as the game went on. It was like, I was so relentless that I couldn't be stopped. I just started shooting my guns off to let them know that I was shooting them down one play at a time."

Kelly went on to be a first-round pick of the San Francisco 49ers in the 1992 NFL draft, being selected with the 27th overall pick. Because of two knee surgeries in college and advanced arthritis in those same knees, his career wasn't as long as he wanted it to be.

"I played for five years in the league - two with the 49ers, two with the Bengals and one with the Falcons,'' he said. "I just didn't have the knees to handle the pounding of the NFL. God had a plan for my life. I guess the plan was to move on with my life away from football."

For now, that plan has Kelly using his knowledge of bad knees to help others. Todd works for Depuy-Mitek, a division of Johnson and Johnson. He sells orthopedic surgical equipment for ACL repair and rotator cuff repair.

"I learned so much, with all that I went through in college and the pros that I understand most everything there is to know with knee repair," Kelly said.

He also is using his knowledge of football to teach his 10-year-old son the ins and outs of what it takes to be a great football player.. One Tennessee coach said that he's already been made aware of the junior TK.

"He's got a chance to be a great football player. He's better at this age than I was, a lot better," Kelly said.

Kelly is also venturing into the broadcast booth as the color analyst for high school football games on Friday nights for CSS. He hasn't had to second-guess the decision to accept that position, because no one has offered him a color-analyst's job calling baseball.

Mark Packer hosts Locker Room presented by Tennessee Traditions at 10 p.m Sundays on UPN-Knoxville. His guest Sunday will be Todd Kelly.