Luke Stocker

KNOXVILLE — Ninety-nine percent of the time, Tennessee junior tight end Luke Stocker comes across as the ultimate Southern gentleman. Soft-spoken. Polite. Selfless.

But even Stocker has his limits. Especially when he’s having a bad hair day beneath his ballcap.

So when UT sports information officials asked him to remove it Tuesday afternoon just before his turn in front of several East Tennessee television cameras at the Volunteers’ weekly media event, Stocker balked.

“I’m not going on without my hat,” he declared. “I’ll do newspaper and radio, but no TV unless the hat stays on.”

Had this been a UT athletic cap atop his head, everything would have been just fine. But Stocker had begun his day donning a hat trumpeting a subdivision developed by his girlfriend’s father in Kingsport.

And because the NCAA rulebook presumably has more entries than Stocker’s hometown of Berea, Ky., has residents (14,431), he was apparently in violation of a rule forbidding advertising of any product other than college athletics.

“I don’t care,” Stocker said. “I’ve worn this hat all morning, and I’m not going on television the way my hair looks right now.”

Amazingly, UT officials had no Vols caps lying around for their 6-foot-6, 240-pounder to wear. A compromise was thankfully reached, however. Stocker could keep his hat on as long as he tilted it back enough to partially obscure the subdivision’s logo.

“I did think about it,” the player said later with a grin, referring to the advertising angle. “I was kind of hoping I could earn some brownie points from my girlfriend’s dad.”

Stocker is earning a lot of brownie points from UT coach Lane Kiffin these days. Especially after his career-best 40-yard reception against Auburn set up a Vols touchdown. He’s averaging over 13 yards a catch this season and appears a serious threat to add soon to the two TD passes he caught in the season-opening rout of Western Kentucky.

“We need to expand Luke’s role,” Kiffin said, “because he’s doing a great job. Unfortunately, we’ve had to keep him in some (to block) because of our young tackles.”

Stocker’s sports interest expanded past home state Kentucky early on because of a longtime connection to former UT wideout Craig Faulkner, who grew up in Richmond, Ky., a long fade route from Berea.

“Craig’s grandmother would babysit for me when I was probably no more than 2, 3, 4 years old,” Stocker said. “Because of Craig (a UT captain in 1993), she was always talking about Tennessee. So I became a UT football fan really early.”

But befitting a tall young lad from the Bluegrass, Stocker was as serious about basketball as football. He averaged 17 points a game his junior year at Madison Southern High, which meant the first UT coach he met was basketball boss Bruce Pearl rather than former football coach Phillip Fulmer.

“I was at Coach Pearl’s camp and my high school coach told him I was a pretty good football player,” Stocker said. “He had Coach Fulmer meet me. I’ll never forget how awesome that was, sitting in Coach Fulmer’s office. He asked if I could come by and run some routes for him the next day. I did and he offered me a scholarship.”

Pearl being Pearl, Bruce Almighty told Stocker he’d be happy to have him walk on in basketball once he became comfortable on the football team.

“But I never wanted to be a jack of all trades and master of none,” Stocker said. “I thought it was best to play football only.”

That was in June of 2005, just before the start of his senior season at Madison Southern. Redshirted at UT the following fall, Stocker has added 30 pounds to his frame the past three years and more than 150 pounds to his bench press, now at 425.

“I was always on the lighter side growing up,” he said. “I was just 17 when I got here, and it’s taken me a while to bulk up.”

With the Vols 2-3 overall and 0-2 in the SEC heading into Saturday’s visit from Georgia, a lot of UT fans are wondering when Stocker and his offensive mates are going to bulk up the scoreboard.

“We’ve got to quit coming out flat,” he said. “We’ve got to get our offense going early. If we can do that and get a win, it would give us a lot of confidence going into the bye week.”

It would certainly earn them a few brownie points with UT’s frustrated fans.