A bold prediction that Tennessee will beat Florida by double digits Saturday isn’t nearly as eye-opening as the photo that accompanies the story.
The Fox Sports column by Clay Travis, circulating widely on social media since it was posted Tuesday, features a shot of a colorful Knoxville/UT tattoo on the side of a young man whose face is not in the picture and who isn’t identified. Travis simply calls him, “My man in the orange overalls with the Sunsphere behind Neyland Stadium tattoo.”
Turns out that man is native Knoxvillian Dylan Gibbs, 20, who isn’t sure how the photo made it to Fox Sports. He said he was leaving the UT-Georgia game in Athens last Saturday when a man who saw Gibbs’ tattoo through his overalls asked if he could take a photo. Gibbs complied and, “It then somehow made it from there to the article.”
The junior political science major at UT, who will turn 21 on Oct. 21, said the tattoo is a work-in-progress by Navada Smith, who started on it when Gibbs was 19. The tattoo depicts the iconic Sunsphere directly behind the stadium, with the Henley Bridge to the right.
“I still have a little more to get finished up involving the Henley Street Bridge part, including line work and shading,” Gibbs said.
He said the response to the tattoo has been “generally all positive,” adding, “People often tell me it is unique. I often get rhetorical questions/comments such as, I must really love Knoxville or I must really like those Vols.”
Gibbs, who works full time at Volunteer Erosion Control in addition to attending UT, says his family has held season tickets at Neyland for more than 40 years: “I am at every home game in Section V Row 2.”
He added that he’ll be wearing white Saturday for the “Checker Neyland” project that aims to fill the stadium with blocks of fans wearing orange and white to replicate the checkerboard pattern in the end zones.
As for his prediction of the game, Gibbs said, “I think if the Vols come out hot and score on our first possession then we will roll Florida, but otherwise it will turn into a bit of a typical back-and- forth, SEC-style game in which ultimately the Vols will come out victorious.”
Spoken like a true Big Orange fan.
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