When in doubt….Call the Fraternity House?
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Last Saturday head coach of the Tennessee Volunteers, Derek Dooley, was faced with a desperate time—a desperate time that, indeed, led to a desperate measure. According to an article from Rivals.com, an hour before Tennessee was set to kick off against the Blue Raiders of Middle Tennessee, Chip Rhome, the Vol’s starting kicker for the game went down with a pulled muscle.
Given the situation, most coaches would simply turn to the backup kicker and never look back. Unfortunately for Derek Dooley and the rest of the football squad, Rhome was the backup kicker. Michael Palarady, the usual starting kicker for the Vols injured himself only three days prior during practice. Thus, when Rhome went down an hour before kickoff the Volunteers officially had zero kickers left for the game. That’s when a guy named Derrick Brodus came in. At 6:10 p.m. Brodus was sitting in his fraternity house preparing to watch the game on TV. Soon after he received a phone call from members of the UT athletic department asking him to be the kicker for that night’s game. Minutes later he was police escorted to Jordan-Hare Stadium, where during the game, he successfully kicked three extra points and one field goal. Brodus stated, “…I thought it was a dream…” It wasn’t a dream. Derek Dooley’s comments were more comical. He stated, “…I said let’s get an APB out on Brodus.’ It’s a good thing he wasn’t having too much fun on a Saturday afternoon…I told the coaches, ‘Hey — an intoxicated Brodus is better than nobody. Get him. Just get him here. Give him a Breathalyzer.’ Fortunately he didn’t do anything bad…” Coach Dooley said it best, thank goodness for a sober Brodus—the one and only available walk-on kicker Tennessee had.
What happened last Saturday night with Derrick Brodus shows that just about anything can happen in college football. Brodus was a mere fraternity-brother walk-on—not even dressed out for the game. In a matter of minutes he became the starting kicker for a major SEC Eastern division school. The actions taken by Derek Dooley are comical, yet highly commendable. He made a critical decision without a lot of time to spare. Moreover, his decision was a good one, and one that likely changed Derrick Brodus’ football career forever.
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College Sports and the Media 
I think this is a very interesting story and should be inspiring to all walk-on athletes. While situations like this do not happen very often, when a player is loyal to his team and works hard, his day to shine could come at any time.
I heard about this story last week and I found it really funny. I’ve never heard about something like this happening before. Derek Dooley’s quotes from the story made it so much better. UT was definitely fortunate though that he was not drunk at the fraternity house.
Last Saturday was a fairytale-dream-come-true for Derrick Brodus. Never in his wildest dreams did he imagine that last Saturday Coach Dooley would send a police escort for him and ask him to come and be the kicker for the Vols. The 3 extra points and field goal that he kicked most definitely changed his football career forever. I have to commend Coach Dooley for making a very quick decision when faced with the possibility of not having a kicker. And, in hindsight, we see that Coach Dooley’s gamble was the right decision. Many times, when faced with impossible situations you have to think outside the box, and that is what Coach Dooley did.