Tennessee Volunteers Football Feeds at MentalBreeze.com

SEC-caliber defensive linemen eligible to play immediately are rarely available at this point of the year.

So, when one of them fell into the Tennessee Volunteers' laps this week for the second year in a row, it was an unexpected and welcome gift. Now, the Vols just hope this one turns out better than the last one.

Havelock, N.C. defensive end Kendal Vickers -- a 6-foot-3, 240-pound pass-rusher who'd been committed to the South Carolina Gamecocks for more than six months -- visited UT this week and told GoVols247 he'll sign with the Vols when he returns home next week.

At the beginning of the week, Vickers was primed to go to junior college. Though he'd committed to South Carolina early in the process, the Gamecocks did not expect he'd qualify, so they kept recruiting players. Once they filled up, there simply wasn't a place for Vickers, who was just going to go to JUCO and be re-recruited in the future. That's until two unexpected things happened:

Vickers isn't the most highly-rated prospect in the country, but he does have a big upside that the 'Cocks thought enough of to extend an offer. He has a very projectable frame and is an accomplished pass-rusher. North Carolina, East Carolina and South Carolina all offered. He was expected to have to attend a JUCO or possibly prep school Georgia Military College, but he qualified instead. When he did, most of the teams in the country had filled up. Tennessee will get a late project who has an SEC frame and the past interest from some good programs.

He is rated as a three-star prospect in the 247 Composite, a two-star by 247, two-star by Scout, two-star by ESPN and a three-star on Rivals.

This is the second time in as many years that the Vols were the beneficiary of a late academic oddity that netted a defensive lineman. Last year, the Florida Gators signed Dante "Omari" Hand, a massive defensive end/defensive tackle, who failed to qualify in Gainesville. After some finagling his situation, UT was able to get him into school. The rumors were he could have gotten in Florida, but the Gators simply didn't want him. After one year of redshirting, staying out-of-shape and complaining about UT via Twitter, Hand left unceremoniously and won't return.

Vickers seems much happier with this decision. He visited Knoxville this week and immediately liked what he saw. For the Vols, he fills a major need and will be able to be brought along slowly. UT has plenty of beef and depth along the defensive front this year and won't need him. But with six defensive linemen exhausting eligibility after this season, Tennessee is woefully thin, and Vickers has enough upside to take a late shot on.

His commitment gives UT four defensive linemen in this class: DE/DT Jason Carr, DE Jaylen Miller, DE Malik Brown and now Vickers.

Congrats to Vickers for qualifying late and getting the opportunity to play in the SEC, and this is a great job by our staff of identifying a player who can help a major need this late and getting him to visit and ultimately sign. Hopefully, he'll wind up like those other diamond-in-the-rough, well-evaluated linemen the Gamecocks have been signing recently.

We're certainly happy to have him. Vickers is Tennessee's 24th commitment of this year's class, but probably only the 23rd who'll make it in. Running back Jabo Lee is not expected to qualify.

The beat-up old VHS still sits in the faux-wood tape deck at my parents' house, watched so many times and worn out to the point that it wouldn't play even if they still owned a recorder. A white strip of adhesive adorns its face where the words "1985 Sugar Bowl: Tennessee 35, Miami 7" and, underneath, "The Sweet Taste of Sugar," written in red ink in my father's neat scrawl.

Ink smears and food stains have become lifelong residents on that sticky paper, even outlasting the contents on the VHS itself and put there by the grubby paws of a Southern Middle Tennessee kid cutting his teeth on the Big Orange.

It hasn't been watched, I'm sure, since I lived there 15 years ago. I'm also sure it never will again. But if I have anything to say about it, it'll never live anywhere else unless it's in my home after my folks pass away. It's far too special to me to ever go in a garbage can during a spring cleaning or make its way into a box full of yard sale items.

It may just be one of many old VHSs in that tape deck, but it was my introduction to Tennessee football.

I was 5 years old [turning 6 in September] in 1985, so I'd be lying if I told you that I'd anxiously anticipated every game during that fabled 9-1-2 season or that I eagerly watched every play with my dad. As a matter of fact, I'm not sure I remember watching any particular game live. But when I look back on my childhood and my love affair with the Vols, nothing stands out more than that tape. I bet I've watched it 300 times from start to finish.

When I was too young to have the attention span to really watch and understand the games, I'd ask Dad to pull out the tape, and we'd watch "The Sweet Taste of Sugar," a highlight reel to recap the season preceding the '86 Sugar Bowl victory over Jimmy Johnson and the mighty Hurricanes.

They were evil back then, the Canes. "They play and act like thugs," my dad would say, with their glitz and glamor, hot-dogging and swagger, taking on the personality of their brash coach. They were easy to hate, and they were top-ranked and poised for a national championship that year. Then, all of a sudden, the Vols pummeled them into oblivion, scoring 35 unanswered points with backup quarterback Daryl Dickey at the helm. At every turn, Tennessee thrashed Vinnie Testaverde. The Vols neutralized Michael Irvin. They shrugged off the Blades brothers and matched every Miami All-American with the kind of hard-nosed team play that won championships.

It was never supposed to happen that way, and because it did -- and because of how my father narrated the season along with John Ward during the "Sweet Taste of Sugar" program -- the players on that team as well as legendary coach Johnny Majors became almost deities to me. Dale Jones, Tony Robinson, Daryl Dickey, Tim McGee, Joel Clinkscales,Chris White, Jeff Smith, Keith Davis, Harry Galbreath, Kelly Ziegler, Mark Hovanic, Charles Davis, Terry McDaniel, Bruce Wilkerson, Carlos Reveiz -- I'd spend hours in my room with my Trapper-Keeper full of lined pages, drawing pictures of their heroic exploits.

It's funny to me now that they were just 18-22 year-old kids. They've always been -- and remain -- larger than life. The highlight tape included postgame interviews with the players which brought their words to our living room, and I still to this day remember begging my dad to take me to a game so I could meet Dale Jones. When I finally shook his hand as a young sports writer covering a UT-Chattanooga football game against Jones' Appalachian State Mountaineers, it was as if I were still the wide-eyed youth.

The plays and performances that highlighted that season are still etched in my brain. Jones' miraculous, game-saving interception of Mike Shula against Alabama, Bama's missed game-winning kick, the shutting down of Bo, Robinson's huge game against UCLA, Robinson's injury and Dickey's meticulous dissection of defenses as a game manager the rest of the way.

The opposing stars UT faced [and mostly vanquished] that year stand out as well. All that ridiculous Miami talent, Heisman winner Bo Jackson, UCLA running back Gaston Green and wide receiver Willie "Flipper" Anderson, Florida running backs Neal Anderson and John L. Williams, Bama All-Americans running back Bobby Humphrey and Biscuit Bennett, Georgia Tech defensive lineman Pat Swilling -- they all held villainous roles on the main stage.

When you're a football-crazed kid, who needed a movie on a rainy afternoon? I'd pop in the tape and spend 4 hours watching the season highlights and then the game. And, oh, what a game it was. Thirty-five unanswered points to end any question about what kind of season UT had. Sure, the two ties were a bit disappointing, but an SEC Championship -- the Vols' first since 1969 -- and throttling of Miami a year after losing second-team All-American running back Johnnie Jones and overcoming the adversity of the injury to all-world athlete Robinson somehow made that season the most memorable of my life until the '98 championship team.

"The 1985 Vols will live in memory as the team that restored the Tennessee tradition," Russ Bebb wrote.

It also lives in my memory as the team that turned a simple game into a rabid passion and that elevated my love affair with the Tennessee Volunteers from a casual state to an obsession. Even before there was an intense hatred of Alabama or Florida or a worldwide platform called the Internet where games can be perverted into more than a sport, there was a boy's simple love of a football team.

When I think of reasons why I love the Vols, that culmination of the '85 season and the highlight tape of the memorable campaign rise to the top of my list. All those John Ward-narrated afternoons and games watched began with that one VHS tape. Without that, I'm not sure I'd have ever attended the stately walls of old UT. I'm not sure I'd have spent a lifetime in sports, and I'm not sure I'd feel the same way about the Vols as I do today.

Thank goodness for it.