Pat Summitt and Friends at the Army/Navy Club

There she was...the line was not twice but three times longer than for any of the others. And the others were males! I fully expected it and why not?

Pat Summitt, head basketball coach for the University of Tennessee Lady Vols, with her team has won the NCAA championship eight times, the winningest coach in all of NCAA history. There she was... signing pictures for the 300 or so Tennessee alumni who gathered last week at the sold-out event to see and hear the top UT coaches tell a few stories, answer question from the "voice" of the Vols, Bob Kesling, and poke fun and glamour at each other at the Army/Navy Club.

Philip Fulmer, the football coach since 1992, and Bruce Pearl, the men's basketball coach who has brought the men's game up to almost par with the ladies, were there, too.

Although guests were warned by e-mail ahead of time that only one autograph would be made for each person by each coach, all three graciously agreed to sign whatever you brought to be autographed just as many times as you wanted! One lady, a design artist for Gannett, brought her 2 1/2 year old son and his Smokey Bear and a basketball which Coach Summit, who looks 20 pounds lighter and ten times better in person than on the tube, happily signed, all the while conversing with each proud alum.

And if you didn't bring anything to sign, no worries: Color photos of each coach were supplied to eager participants. And there was no mention about a wavering football team, hungry for a better year than we've seen in a long time.

If Coach Pearl can't make it as a coach and there's no sign of that since he took the men's basketball team to No. 1 for the first time in history, he could certainly earn big bucks as a comedian for he's as genuinely funny as anybody you'd hear on the late night shows. He just completed his third year for the Vols.

He said that the night before the wildly popular UT-University of Memphis game (when the teams were ranked No. 2 and No. 1, respectively) where some fans were paying thousands of dollars for tickets, he told two players he wanted them to go with him the morning of the game to St. Jude's, the renowned children's cancer hospital in Memphis, to visit some of the children. When Coach Pearl went out to the bus early the next day for the visit to St. Jude's, there already seated on the bus was the entire team waiting for him. He said it was that kind of a team, that kind of a year.

A surprisingly good dinner of bar-b-cue on china plates atop tablecloths added to a fun evening on top of a hill with a view looking towards a gorgeous sunset outlined by long fairways and even a fox which crossed the paths of UT alums on their way up to the clubhouse. Most everyone had orange of some sort in their apparel or running through their veins.