KNOXVILLE - More than 25 years before Bob Shoop became defensive coordinator at Tennessee, he nearly took an exit on his career's freeway that would have prevented him from ever joining the Volunteers.
After wrapping up his time at Yale, where he earned an economics degree while playing football and baseball, in 1989 the Pennsylvania native found himself in England, playing and coaching for the Birmingham Bulls of the British American Football Association.
"I knew I wanted to incorporate sports in whatever career I chose to pursue, and at the time I really didn't know any other way than just to get into coaching," Shoop recalled in his Anderson Training Center office early Thursday afternoon.
"The people who impacted me the most in my life, other than perhaps my father, were my high school coaches and college coaches. I got the bug. At first it was one of those things that's going to look good on a résumé, and we'll figure it out after that. Then I was hooked."
Shoop was almost hooked into a career in baseball instead of the path he took to become one of the most highly regarded college coordinators in the country.
His time as a pitcher for Yale coincided with Bart Giamatti's tenure as the school's president. Giamatti often sat with Shoop in the dugout during games he wasn't pitching and told him he couldn't understand his football fascination given that he was better at baseball.
When Giamatti became Major League Baseball's commissioner in 1989 and an internship opened in his office, he expressed his desire that Shoop at least apply for the position.
"I made a decision," Shoop explained, "that I couldn't leave my teammates in the middle of the season and didn't pursue that opportunity."
Instead of heading down a path that might have led to a job in a front office in the baseball world, Shoop spent time in what he bluntly dubbed "a garbage league" in England.
"That wasn't a fair way to put it," Shoop said later, correcting himself. "It was a semi-pro league. We had guys on our team, I always say, that could have played Division I football, and we had guys on our team that wouldn't make the JV team on their high school teams. It ran that gamut."
Shoop's coaching career began later that year when he became a graduate assistant at his alma mater.
More than 26 years later, Shoop finds himself charged with the task of turning Tennessee's defense into a unit good enough to help the Vols win a long-awaited championship. After coordinating the defense at Vanderbilt from 2011 to 2013 and Penn State in 2014 and 2015, Shoop was hired in January to replace John Jancek, the Vols' defensive coordinator the past two seasons who left Tennessee days after its Outback Bowl win.
Since helping Tennessee put the finishing touches on its 2016 signing class, Shoop's focus has been on building relationships and familiarizing himself with the players he inherited. He met with each player individually and watched game video with many of them. He also watched weight-room and skill-development workouts.
"Any time there's change, there's a little bit of anxiety," Shoop said. "I don't want the guys to be anxious. For the veteran guys, I want them to know that part of the reason I took this job is because it wasn't a rebuilding job. I don't feel like we need to tear it down and start up. I feel like maybe I can enhance it. I call it the 50,000-mile checkup.
"Some of the things (Tennessee) did really, really well last year, I want to build off of that, but maybe there's a piece or two that we did at either Vanderbilt or Penn State that I can bring in and help take to the next level. On the other hand, for some of the younger players or some of the players that may feel like this is their time, it's a fresh set of eyes. It's a new start. Hopefully it's something that's beneficial to everybody."
Tennessee is 13-5 in its past 18 games, and the Vols have used the 25 points that made the difference in those defeats as motivation this offseason. For Shoop, there have been several talking points in that regard.
"We're creating a championship culture in everything we do," he said. "Not that there wasn't one before, but it's that mindset right there. We've talked about culture before scheme. As we head into spring ball, the phrase we've been using is techniques not tactics: improving tackling fundamentals, increasing ball disruptions, stripping attempts, creating more takeaways.
"The last piece would be finishing. I think it's well documented that those 25 points, some of those games were games (Tennessee) had the lead late in the game, and (it's) just playing with a confidence in those situations. I think Coach (Butch Jones) is going to put us in some of those situations in the spring.
"Competing and playing your best when the game's on the line I think our players will be better for having gone through those experiences and are more prepared for that now."
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.