University of Tennessee Athletics
Inside the T – Credit Where It's Due
January 13, 2016 | Football
By Brian Rice
UTSports.com
As a reporter, it’s very important for me to get a story right.
But the term “right” doesn’t apply the same way to every story. Factually correct is essential, but not difficult to pull off if you’re doing the proper research and proofreading. The “right” I’m talking about is nailing the essence of a story, doing right by the people whose story you’re telling.
This week is one of those times that I really had to focus in to get a story “right.”
All season long, photographer Craig Bisacre and I worked on a profile of the football student managers here at UT. We wanted to tell their story as the unsung heroes that help make a big-time college football program operate as smoothly as the Volunteers do.
The profile was Craig’s idea, but one close to my heart from my time as a volleyball student manager during grad school here at UT. My friends were managers from other sports, including some of my closest friends to this day. So with that background, it was very important to get this story “right.”
We started in fall camp with taking notes on all the things that our student managers do before, during and after practice. Craig spent time in practices getting shots of the guys going through their routines from set-up to tear-down every day.
There was the first time the game helmets were prepared with the new decals, the first time the equipment truck was packed for Nashville and the opener against Bowling Green and the first time the new Nike uniforms were laid out in the locker room at Nissan Stadium.
Craig was a little more invested in the routine than I was. While I was on the team flight to road trips to Gainesville, Florida and Columbia, Missouri, he was on the charter bus that the managers and trainers take to away games to make sure everything is set up and ready for the team’s arrival.
Road trips are some of the best memories that the managers will have. Setting up the locker room on Fridays is a tradition. Saturday mornings involve a stop for the manager bus (with a few extra guests, those of us who have to get to the stadium early) for breakfast, then some finishing touches on the locker room. After setup, they go out to the field for a little two-hand touch football game.
Back in the locker room, they wait for the team to arrive while watching other games on the TVs that are occasionally up in the visitor digs. The rooting interests are varied, but let’s just say that conference pride wasn’t in the conversation when we were at Missouri and the Florida-Florida Atlantic and South Carolina-Citadel games were in the waning moments.
And while the rest of us get on busses to head to the airport, home less than two hours away, the managers start the process of undoing everything they worked to put up. It all has to go back on the equipment truck, then it’s a long bus ride behind it only to unload once again and start the process all over for a week later.
Without all of their work, Tennessee football would not be what it is, and that’s why the story of the student managers is an important one. And it is why it was important to get it right.
