KNOXVILLE - In less than 30 minutes, the University of Tennessee football team would begin its Vol Walk down Peyton Manning Pass into Neyland Stadium, just as it has every home game since Alabama came to town in 1990.
It was this past Saturday and the Florida Gators awaited. Fans would be seven or eight deep along the route. It's the path every school-aged kid who's ever dreamed of wearing UT orange wants to travel.
But it was about to get much bigger than that for redshirt senior walk-on Elijah "Jesse" Medford. A long snapper from Burlington, North Carolina, whose father Erle also had been a Volunteers walk-on, Medford was pulled aside by UT strength coach Craig Fitzgerald and given a surprising bit of news.
"You're going to be a captain tonight," Coach Fitz told him.
Said Medford on Monday: "They just kind of sprung it on me. It was a humbling experience."
Perhaps, but if not much else went right for the Vols during that 47-21 defeat to the Gators, UT captains Medford, Ryan Johnson, Darrin Kirkland Jr. and Shy Tuttle did win the coin toss. That was surely, at least in some small way, a credit to Medford, a two-time Southeastern Conference academic honor roll selection.
"It's been a progression for the past five years," the industrial engineering major said of his long climb up the depth chart as a 5-foot-9, 202-pounder, that weight bolstered by a summer of heavy eating and weightlifting at the request of Vols head coach Jeremy Pruitt. "It has been challenging, but it has been good."
At first glance, there doesn't figure to be much good transpiring from this very challenging Big Orange football season. In this deuces-wild weekend of a Vols bunch with two wins and two losses heading to No. 2 Georgia, the "Legion of the Miserable" - as former UT coach Johnny Majors once dubbed the school's grumpiest fans - have plenty to worry about, both now and later.
Saturday's loss was the second time this season the Vols have surrendered 40 or more points to a Power Five conference foe, following a 40-14 loss to West Virginia in the season opener.
That was somewhat understandable and forgivable, given the Mountaineers' offensive chops and UT's 4-8 record from a season ago.
But Florida didn't figure to be much better than the Vols going into last Saturday before six Big Orange turnovers became a problem too big to overcome.
"We can't do anything about what happened Saturday night," said sophomore offensive tackle Trey Smith. "If we had a time-travel machine, I would go back right now. But we just have to keep going and do what we do."
If a time-travel machine did exist, UT would only need to revisit its last trip to Georgia two years ago to understand what it takes to beat the Bulldogs between the hedges.
Thanks to a last-gasp, Hail Mary pass from Josh Dobbs to Jauan Jennings, the Vols vanquished the Dawgs 34-31.
But to find young men such as Medford, high school football heroes who, in his words, exited the cradle wanting to "give my all for Tennessee," a time-travel machine might need to venture a wee bit further back, perhaps to the 1960s or 1970s, before cable television and video games and the worldwide web made paying your own way to sit on the bench at Big State U a fairly unattractive goal.
"It looks a lot different on the inside," said Medford, who became the starting long snapper before the Florida game. "You put in a lot longer hours than you might think."
Yet no one should mistake that for a complaint. This is a young man who started on the offensive line, at linebacker and played special teams at Burlington's Walter Williams High School because "I never liked to come off the field."
He never liked to take a day off during this past summer, either. Inspired by Pruitt's goals for him to gain weight and strength, Medford stayed in Knoxville during most of the offseason.
Besides, thanks to his parents, "I grew up a VFL (Vol for Life)," said the 23-year-old.
Because of that, it was an extra special thrill for him to find his folks during the Vol Walk and tell them to "watch the coin toss."
Unless the performance on the field dramatically changes over the next few weeks, there will be plenty of reasons for the Big Orange Nation to get excited about next to nothing past the coin toss. A bowl bid already looks all but lost. Another winless conference campaign remains a possibility.
But young men such as Medford are also more than good enough reasons to be proud of this squad, whatever its eventual won-lost record.
"It's hard to have expectations as a walk-on," Medford said of his five-year journey. "You come here to be a part of something bigger than yourself."
You could say that's why most folks become fans of any team. But when you're a career walk-on who grew up viewing yourself as a Vol for Life, there's almost nothing much bigger than becoming a UT game captain before a crowd of 100,027 inside Neyland Stadium.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com