Perhaps because he believes he’s been a University of Tennessee football fan “since the day I was born,” Hunter Masters couldn’t pass up a chance at Riverbend a couple of weeks ago to enter a random drawing to win the “Big Orange/Neyland Stadium Experience.”
Perhaps because LeBron Landreth “lucked out that my wife’s favorite color is orange,” he registered, too.
But with more than 3,000 presumably passionate Big Orange fans stuffing their names and phone numbers into the giant box at the WGOW-FM tent – along with close to 60 online entries at wgow.com – the odds of either Masters or Landreth winning the radio station’s contest were at least as long as UT’s Butch Jones naming Jon Gruden his quarterbacks coach.
But then the Sport Talk guys at 102.3 FM – Quake, Doc and Cowboy Joe – drew the names of 10 finalists the Monday following the festival. Both the 20-year-old Masters and 34-year-old Landreth made the cut for the prize co-sponsored by WGOW and Abra Auto Body.
Two days after that, during a live remote at Abra on June 17, Landreth’s and Masters’ names were pulled from a hat, which meant that six days later they would be driven to Knoxville in limousines, eat lunch at Calhoun’s Bar-B-Q on the Tennessee River, tour the stunning UT football complex and visit Neyland Stadium’s most exclusive areas, including the Vols’ game-day locker room.
Oh, and they’d also get to meet at least a couple of Big Orange coaches and Bob Kesling, the “Voice of the Vols.”
“I probably got a little camera-happy,” said Landreth on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after his return from Volsville. “I probably took a couple of hundred pictures. But how many times do you get to experience something 98 percent of UT’s fans will never get a chance to see?”
Indeed, from the moment they departed Abra at 9 a.m. Tuesday in the vehicles provided Willis Limousine Service until their return nearly 13 hours later, Landreth and Masters saw a side of UT athletics, especially football, that few get to witness. And because the contest allowed each winner to bring a guest, Landreth’s Big Orange buddy Seth Coleman and Masters’ father Kenny also got to join the fun.
“They were probably the biggest UT fans I’ve met in a long time,” said Sport Talk’s Scott “Quake” McMahen of the foursome. “I don’t think their feet touched the ground the whole trip.”
Not that they were the only ones floating on air around Neyland Stadium. Though McMahen didn’t catch their names, he ran into a Chattanooga couple who had just become engaged when the future groom fell to his knees inside the football locker room and proposed to his future bride.
“And this was just a random Tuesday at Neyland Stadium,” Quake said.
But there was nothing random about the trip that Landreth, Masters and their guests took.
“This is Abra’s first year helping sponsor this, but this is our third year doing this,” McMahen explained. “And next year we may expand it to do both the Vols and the (NFL’s) Titans.”
Beyond that, because Jones takes his family vacations during the last two weeks of June, WGOW and Abra are hoping to move the Experience back to May in 2016 in hopes of making the UT football coach a part of the show.
As it was, the group got to meet men’s basketball assistant Chris Ogden, women’s basketball assistant Jolette Law, assistant equipment manager (and Chattanooga native) Max Parrott and Kesling.
For Masters, a Red Bank High School product and Georgia Northwestern Technical College student who works part-time at Food Lion, the biggest thrills were seeing Neyland Stadium for the first time and meeting Kesling.
“I’ve heard his voice so many times,” he said. “I got an autographed picture of him. I just can’t wait for the (football) season to start. I think we’re going to win eight to nine games. I could see us in the SEC title game.”
And if the Vols don’t get that far in Jones’ third season running the program?
“I’d be a little upset,” Masters said. “But (Jones) is still rebuilding.”
Landreth has attended at least one UT football game a year in Neyland for as long as he can remember. But he finds himself more and more drawn to his Ooltewah home’s basement these days, where he and wife Naylene can “watch the games on television with all our orange stuff on. It’s just so much easier and cheaper than driving all the way to Knoxville, paying $30 to park and $200 or so for tickets.”
But for at least one day, the FleetPride sales rep could feed his Big Orange fix for free.
“Just knowing,” Landreth said, his voice growing emotional as he recalled the group’s time in Neyland’s home locker room, “that you’re sitting in the heart of where all the excitement begins on game day.”
Yet the most excitement had far less to do with a regal stadium than a rising star.
“When we walked into the indoor practice facility and saw (quarterback) Josh Dobbs, we couldn’t believe it,” Landreth said. “I think Dobbs even high-fived one of the guys in the group.”
Said McMahen: “Just to see their faces when they saw Dobbs was the highlight for me. I thought they were going to pass out.”
Which would probably make them no different than at least 98 percent of the rest of the Big Orange Nation.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com