Once they were student-athletes. Then the athlete part was over and the cheering stopped.

At the University of Tennessee, however, former athletes are still encouraged to be students.

When the alma mater is played at Neyland Stadium on a homecoming Saturday, a select few will have a special appreciation for their current status.

Not as ex-Vols, but as alumni.

"Other than getting married and having my children, this has been the best experience I could think of,'' Jesse Turnbow said this week.

Turnbow makes an excellent poster boy for a program UT calls Renewing Academic Commitment, a service that has encouraged several dozen former Vols to return to school and finish their degrees.

Turnbow played his last down of football for UT in 1977. The 6-foot-8 former defensive lineman returned to campus in 2005. He graduated two years later.

In most cases, the hiatus is less dramatic. Eddie Moore and Omari Hand, senior teammates in 2002, graduated with Turnbow last May.

Cody Douglas, a senior on the 2005 team, is taking 12 hours this semester and expects to graduate in December.

For Douglas, the impetus to return to school came last year when he was between unsuccessful attempts to latch on with an NFL team.

When he went real-world job hunting the best he could do was a chemical plant.

"The pay was pretty good,'' said Douglas, "but it was hazard pay.

"I was thinking how I was fortunate enough to earn a scholarship to college to get an education, so it's foolish to be doing this when I could easily have a college education and get a better job.''

UT pays for tuition, fees and books for the returning athletes.

Today, the program operates through the Thornton Academic Center. The "RAC" name came along in the mid-1990s when Tyler Johnson was in charge, but the offer has been in place since the 1980s, according to Carmen Tegano.

Tegano was the athletic department's academic chief when athletic director Doug Dickey and coach Johnny Majors first discussed the idea of helping former Vols finish their degrees.

"It just seemed like the right thing to do,'' said Tegano. "If a young man was willing to commit for four years why not commit for another semester (or more).

"Word got around. Guys started popping up.''

Not everyone thought the school should be footing the bill for the athletes to come back.

Tegano recalls a faculty senate meeting in which Dickey mentioned UT planned to pay educational expenses, even for NFL players.

"A faculty member took issue with the fact that we were going to support professional athletes,'' said Tegano. "I remember sitting back watching Doug Dickey bull-rush the guy.''

Most of the RAC alumni are football players, but not all. Fred Jenkins and C.J. Black from basketball took advantage.

"Coaches e-mail us and ask who we have that's only a few hours short,'' said Fernandez West, interim RAC director. "There's been some that wanted to come back but couldn't because of their jobs.

"It's not an easy thing to do.''

Jason Witten is working with RAC through correspondence courses while catching passes for the Dallas Cowboys. One of the program's proudest alumni was the late Reggie White.

Douglas said the program has worked even better than he anticipated.

"I'll never play another down for the University of Tennessee,'' he said, "so you expect to be put on a back burner. But that hasn't been the case.

"They find more than enough time for you, and I have all the resources available.''

Turnbow, long out of the loop at UT, had never heard of RAC.

Going through a divorce in Cincinnati and trying to reorganize his life in 2005, he ended up back in school seemingly by chance.

Turnbow doesn't believe it was chance, though. After a soul-searching prayer session in his car at an Atlanta gas station, he says God pointed him to campus at a moment when Phillip Fulmer happened to be leaving his office and getting in his car.

The two barely knew each other but Fulmer immediately offered to help Turnbow get back in school.

That summer, he was in an English poetry class, resuming his long-abandoned journey toward his degree.

"I was kind of like walking in the Twilight Zone,'' said Turnbow. "I know the campus like the back of my hand but I would turn corners expecting to see the same people I went to school with 30 years ago.''

He had to learn how to use laptops and e-mail. When he walked across the stage last May with his diploma, the crowd - including his 26-year-old college graduate daughter - gave him a standing ovation.

Now that he's back on campus, he hates to leave. Turnbow is mentoring current athletes at the Thornton Center - and planning to enter graduate school.

"It's such a great thing the school is offering,'' he said, " and I want to spread it like a disease.''

Mike Strange may be reached at 865-342-6276 or strange2@knews.com.

© 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.