Metro Pulse/Cover/The Football Issue

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Introduction

Guys & Vols
Brooks Clark's annual predictions for the season to come.

Then Again...
Eh, what does that Brooks guy know, anyway? Adrienne Martini and Joey Cody offer the 2000 Chicks' Picks.

Blue-Bloods
Mike Gibson takes a look at Tennessee Titans fans.

Managing Success

The Fizzicks of Football
Jesse Fox Mayshark explodes the myth that academics and football don't mix.

Phil Fulmer gets the credit, but UT's student manager knows who's really behind the Vols' championship runs

by Matthew T. Everett

There's an odd mix of pageantry and scruffiness as the University of Tennessee Volunteers hold their last summer scrimmage, nine days before opening the season with the Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles on Sept. 2.

The players wander out onto the field at Neyland Stadium in a rough sketch of the ceremonial run through the T that opens home games. They're obviously dressed for practice in their mismatched jerseys: some of them wear orange, some of them are in white, and the quarterbacks are protected by their no-contact green shirts. All their practice helmets are plain white, the trademark power T absent until just before the first game.

About a hundred scattered spectators sit in the stands, watching quarterback Joey Matthews emerge as the likely starter for the opening game. The scrimmage itself, with dropped passes, missed throws, problematic kick coverage, and dictatorial oversight by the coaching staff, is just an approximation of a real college football game.

But despite the spotty performance, the coaching staff still runs the afternoon practice session with the precision of a well-orchestrated military campaign. Head coach Phil Fulmer, in a gray UT windbreaker and khaki shorts, stands behind the offense throughout the scrimmage, directing his players and coaches like a World War II field general. And right behind him, almost lost among the genetically-gifted giants of one of the country's top college football programs, is Allen Sitzler, the team's diminutive but indispensable student equipment manager.

Sitzler, 24, stands about 5'9'' and looks...well, looks nothing like an athlete, even though he played baseball and basketball at Cleveland State Community College in southeastern Tennessee a few years ago. He's wearing a gray Tennessee T-shirt, black athletic shorts, and black coaching shoes, with an orange and white baseball cap pulled down over his eyes. A practice schedule is tucked into the strap of an orange fanny pack around his waist and a whistle hangs from a shoestring around his neck.

Watching from the sidelines, he looks like a miniature version of Fulmer, but it's not clear what he does, exactly. Before the scrimmage begins, as the players litter the field for stretching exercises and rudimentary warm-up drills, he's all over the place—setting up a place-kicking net on the sidelines, collecting loose balls for quarterback drills, cleaning helmets with a handkerchief, conferring with Fulmer at midfield. During the scrimmage, he lingers in Fulmer's shadow, staying within a few paces and directing players on and off the field with a complicated series of hand signals and an unexpected bellow that's audible 50 yards away. After the practice, he'll be back in the equipment room, storing pads and helmets and shoes and washing uniforms while the players are showered and fed and sent on their way.

It's a tough schedule, and he's prepared to do just about anything. But Sitzler knows—even if nobody else does—precisely what his real role is. "I run practice," he says, smiling at his own bravado. "That's the way I like to put it."

Sitzler's known as "Chicken Hawk" for his resemblance to the pestering character in Foghorn Leghorn cartoons, though he himself prefers the truncated "Hawk." He's been an equipment manager since the spring of 1997.

"Tennessee football has always been such a big part of my life," he says. "When I was four years old I'd see them run through the T. I never in my life thought I'd be part of it."

Now he's a graduate assistant, just one semester shy of his master's degree in, appropriately enough, sports administration (he has a bachelor's degree in broadcasting). He has a national championship ring, and he's the head manager. He supervises 17 other student managers, all of them under the ultimate authority of Roger Frazier, the team's full-time staff manager, and Fulmer.

But even now, after so much experience and with steadily increasing responsibilities, Sitzler has a tough time defining his duties. He doesn't really run practice. He's a sort of extension of the coaching staff, doing all the grunt chores that need to get done for practice and game days to operate.

"It just depends on the day," he says. "It could be anything. If somebody says, 'Hey, I need 12 tables and 500 chairs,' we'll move them."

Most of his responsibilities, though, revolve around the staggering piles of helmets, football shoes, thigh pads, hip pads, elbow pads, gloves, mouthpieces, helmet straps, jerseys, pants, running shorts, and T-shirts that are stored in the cavernous equipment room on the ground floor of the Neyland-Thompson sports complex. He is, after all, the team's equipment manager.

The equipment room is known affectionately as "The Cage," because its former incarnation in Stokely Athletics Center, just a few hundred feet away, was just that—a wire enclosure where team gear was stored and distributed. Now The Cage is a comfortable, if overwhelmingly cluttered, haven in the bowels of the state-of-the-art sports complex. A few hours before practice, players lounge around outside, waiting patiently after conditioning workouts to be fitted or to pick up practice gear. A handful of student managers, including Sitzler, come in and out, tossing around footballs and generally hanging out. It seems slow in the few hours preceding practice, but there's always something to do—a practice schedule to prepare, or uniforms to be washed, or busted shoulder pads to be repaired. In the weeks before the first game, there's always more to do and less time to get it right. But there's always time for the traditions of equipment management.

Just as players and fans take pride in the Tennessee walking horse and endless renditions of "Rocky Top," managers have their own pregame rituals. They're substantially less picturesque than, say, the team's procession to the stadium before home games, but Sitzler revels in equipment traditions like preparing helmets for game day.

"We used to just take them in the shower and scrub them with brillo pads, then T and stripe them," Sitzler says. "But now they're metallic, and the brillo pads would kill the finish. So we use distilled alcohol on them. It takes away from the tradition, but it looks a lot better."

But the real work for the student managers doesn't start until they're on the field, alongside the team. And it's Sitzler's job to make sure everything runs smoothly. If somebody doesn't have the right equipment, if there aren't enough balls for a particular drill, or if the tackling dummies are in the wrong place, it's his fault.

"If anything is messed up, practice stops," Sitzler says. "And at this high level, time can't be lost because you don't have the right pads. It doesn't seem like a whole lot, but it adds up. A minute makes a big deal."

All of that practice culminates with game day. Sitzler's right out there on the sidelines each Saturday, running back and forth in an effort to read Fulmer's mind, giving him what he needs before he asks for it. The toughest part—carrying the abundant wires to Fulmer's sideline headset—is gone now that Fulmer uses wireless headphones. "The first time I did it we were at UCLA and it was 112 degrees," Sitzler says. "He was weaving in and out everywhere, and with all those wires you can't go in and out between players. I finally just dropped it."

There's a lot of time invested by the managers: Sitzler puts in about 40 hours a week, compared to the limited 20 hours of practice that athletes are allowed by the NCAA. There are late hours, especially after games, and early hours during summer two-a-days. The managers don't get Thanksgiving holidays, and they only get two or three days off for Christmas. It's a lot of work, but it also allows Sitzler the chance to experience, by proxy, the thrill of athletic competition.

"I had a chance to go up in the boxes with the coaches. But there was no way I was going to miss being out on the field," Sitzler says. "You're with the players out on the field of battle. They come off the field after making a big play, going nuts, and you're there with them. During the Florida game (in 1998), I was laying on the ground with Peerless Price, praying they'd miss that kick."

As the final summer scrimmage winds down, there's a sense of barely-contained chaos on the sidelines. Assistant coach Dan Brooks roars for players to move off of the edges of the field. Senior players are anxious about a dinner at Fulmer's house later that night, waiting none too patiently for practice to end so they can shower and get dressed.

On the field, players grunt and huff, crashing into each other with thinly-restrained violence. The noise reverberates in the nearly-empty stadium. It seems like a dangerous place to be.

And Sitzler's right in the middle of it. He's calm but alert, constantly checking his schedule and ushering players on and off the field. While Fulmer stands nearly motionless, hulking and brooding, Sitzler's just behind him, trying to guess his boss's thoughts and stay one step ahead of him.

It's probably not how Sitzler imagined it 20 years ago, when he first came to Neyland Stadium. Nobody really grows up dreaming of a future as an equipment manager. But he's out there anyway. He was there when the Vols finally got the Gators off their backs two years ago. He's never lost to Alabama. He has two Southeastern Conference Championship rings, and one for the 1998 national title. And he'll be out there 11 times again this fall.