In 2011, Tennessee and head coach Derek Dooley brought in kicker Derrick Brodus from a nearby university fraternity house less than 60 minutes before kickoff. While the story may not be familiar to everyone in college football, it’s certainly an old legend among the Tennessee fanbase.
Now, more than a decade later, a familiar SEC foe is doing the same thing. Earlier this week, while speaking to the Ole Miss media, Rebels head coach Lane Kiffin described the process of bringing in the team’s new punter.
“I don’t know a whole lot about him,” Kiffin said about Rebels’ new punter Charlie Pollock. “I think he was down at the frat house at a keg party or something, you know, where they got him from. So we’ve got some conditioning work to do with my guy. But we just said, ‘Hey, someone go find a punter around campus.’ So we found one that actually used to punt in Division I. You never know.”
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Pollock is listed by the Ole Miss website as a freshman from Marietta, Georgia. The 6-foot-1 punter also has Nevada listed as a previous school, but there is no other information on Pollock.
While there are some differences, it is a fairly similar story to Tennessee and Brodus back in 2011.
As the story goes, just about an hour before kick-off, Tennessee lost their second kicker due to injury and did not have any suited up for the game. Dooley called upon Tennessee student Derrick Brodus, who was on his fraternity house’s couch getting ready to watch the Vols host Middle Tennessee about a mile away.
“[Former Tennessee kicker Chip Rhome] went out there like the kickers do before pregame and they all come back in a panic,” then-Tennessee head coach Derek Dooley said about the game via Yahoo Sports. “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.”
Despite the chaotic 60-minute stretch, Derrick Brodus was out on the field in a Tennessee uniform before kick-off. And luckily for Tennessee, Brodus came ready to play.
The Tennessee left-footed kicker was 3-for-3 on his extra point attempts and even knocked through a 21-yard field goal in the second quarter.
Kiffin said they found their punter at the frat house 😂 pic.twitter.com/ycr2LlgU5w
— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) August 15, 2022
