Tom Mattingly

Interesting things can happen when one coach leaves and another takes his place.

All Travis Stephens wanted was a chance to be the man.

There was a time from the 1950s into the 1970s, News-Sentinel Sports Editor Tom Siler carried on a running battle with the University of Tennessee Athletic Department concerning kickoff times for Tennessee home games.

Over the course of recorded Tennessee football history, was there ever a better afternoon to be a Vol fan than Sept. 29, 1973?

There are days from another lifetime that can never be forgotten. Answer the phone enough times, and a great many interesting things will happen.

The calendar tells us that Oct. 21, 1967, was a Saturday. It was the "Third Saturday in October," and that meant Tennessee and Alabama would be squaring off on the freshly painted turf of Legion Field in Birmingham.

The inexorable passage of time has a way of defusing nearly any controversy. Fans often look back at "hot button" athletic issues of the past, wondering what all the fuss was about.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Traveling to various esoteric venues with the Tennessee football team often is enjoyable, and there are some intriguing stories, many of which can be told in the pages of a family newspaper.

It had to have been an exciting time in the early hours of Saturday, July 17, 1948, when Mickie and Lindsey Nelson welcomed the arrival of their first daughter, Sharon, at St. Mary's Hospital in Knoxville.

Back in the day, it didn't matter how players ended up at Tennessee to play football. It didn't matter who you were, or what your "credentials" were. Once players arrived in Knoxville, they had to prove themselves. Over the years, ...

The story came out of left field, someone claiming to have poisoned two 130-year-old live oaks at "Toomer's Corner" near the campus of Auburn University, to the point of admitting so on the "Paul Finebaum Show."

What does Neyland Stadium have in common with Wrigley Field?

"There is a basic flaw in the college game, one that courses through its body like an infection. It is called recruiting, and it is the bane of college football."

The battles between opposing schools in the SEC are fun, on or off the field.