Editor’s note: This is the sixth story in a series reflecting on the 1998 Tennessee football team that finished 13-0 and won the BCS national championship.
Phillip Fulmer showed up to a Tennessee football practice one day before the Volunteers’ played Alabama in 1998 with a gift that became an unlikely catalyst in the team’s run to a national championship.
Tom Ogle, a friend of Fulmer’s, sent the coach a walking stick with Fulmer’s name and “Tennessee Vols” carved into it. For Fulmer, a fan of hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains, it meant a lot.
He later referred to the walking stick as “beautiful” in his book “A Perfect Season.” And he wanted to show it off.
“I took the stick to the practice field with me, I guess, just to show the players and as a conversation piece,” Fulmer wrote.