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KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — At most games in most years, the first few rows of chair-backed seats on the west side behind Neyland Stadium’s north end zone are reserved for recruits and their families. Tennessee uses the primo seats to make sure anyone considering wearing a Power T gets an up-close look at a Vols game day.

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But in the era of COVID-19, the NCAA extended the recruiting dead period through Jan. 1, 2021. Schools are not allowed to officially host recruits on game days or any other time. Plus, Neyland Stadium is only permitted to host fans at a socially distanced, 25 percent capacity.

So this season, those seats are being occupied on game days by a different kind of VIP.

For Tennessee’s home opener against Missouri earlier this month, about a dozen cutouts of children’s hospital patients found a seat in the section, which is also used to host players’ parents.

“Everybody’s been so excited about it. They can’t go to games right now, and to our kids, it’s like being a celebrity,” said Cheryl Allmon, the director of volunteer services and programs at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital. “They feel like a celebrity.”

When Tennessee kicks off its second home game against Kentucky on Saturday, the number of cutouts is expected to grow to about 40. Tennessee has also reached out to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis about adding new faces to the stands as the season continues.

“We want to get as many in the stands as we can,” said Ashley Smith, Tennessee’s assistant athletics director for player relations and development.

The idea for the new tradition began about a month ago, but really, it’s been almost three years in the making.

When Tennessee first hired Jeremy Pruitt as head coach in December 2017, his wife, Casey Pruitt, started Googling.

When Pruitt was working as Nick Saban’s defensive coordinator at Alabama, the Pruitts’ young son Ridge had been treated at the children’s hospital in Birmingham. The Pruitts came away impressed with the work done at the facility.

“I knew I wanted to do some community service things with them,” Casey Pruitt said.

She did.

And when the family packed up and moved to Rocky Top almost three years ago, she started researching children’s hospitals in Knoxville and discovered East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, a facility just outside the University of Tennessee campus.

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She placed a call to Allmon about how she could get involved, initially pitching the idea of a visit with some of the wives of the Vols’ new coaching staff.

A few months after the Pruitts arrived in Tennessee, Ridge suffered a serious cut on his finger that required stitches and an emergency trip to the children’s hospital. Ridge, 5, is on the autism spectrum. Like many on the spectrum, he has high sensitivity to sensory stimuli.

The hospital brought in multiple therapists to care for Ridge while his finger was being stitched, helping to calm him down and distract him from the work being done on his finger.

“I just thought, ‘Oh gosh, I definitely made the right move. At that point, I’d already reached out about getting involved,” Casey Pruitt said. “I thought, ‘Wow, even somebody who’s just there for a few hours for emergency care, they really go above and beyond over there to make sure everyone who comes through their doors is treated like a child and not like a medical patient.”

That relationship has only grown in the years since. Casey Pruitt will routinely make visits to spend time with patients and bring goodie bags. They talk, make arts and crafts or share a snack.

“Sometimes, the kids can be sore or tired from treatment, but a lot of times the parents will be like, ‘Oh, an adult to talk to that isn’t a doctor or a nurse!’ It never fails, every time we go up there and do it we end up talking to parents for 30 minutes or an hour,” she said. “And if you can put a smile on those kids’ faces with what they have to deal with every day, it feels like you’ve really accomplished something.”

In 2002, Allmon’s own son was sick and needed treatment at the hospital. He’s a healthy 25-year-old man now, but three years after beginning her relationship with the hospital as a worried parent of a sick child, she became an employee, where she’s been ever since.

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“A lot of times, folks will show up and they just kind of want to go and walk through the hospital and say hi to a few patients,” Allmon said. “But I’ll never forget the day Casey showed up. She had on blue jeans and a UT shirt and bags of goodies to give out, crafts to make, and she hit the ground running. We went to the oncology clinic and she’s got the energy of 100 people. She blended with our patients and forged a relationship with our coaches’ wives.”

Additionally, Casey Pruitt has helped bring players to the hospital who patients idolize, win or lose, as well as her husband.

“In the 15 years I’ve been here, only one other time have we ever had one of the coaches come here,” Allmon said. “It was a specific request and he came, went up a back elevator, saw one patient that had made a special request, went back down the elevator and he left. I thought it would be something similar when Casey brought Jeremy. But I didn’t think they were ever going to leave. Every room he went into, he’d pull up a chair and just become best friends. He’s throwing a football with patients, all kinds of stuff.”

On one visit, he encountered a 12-year-old girl, and in a rocking chair beside her bed, he signed a football and gave it to her. She was not impressed. She informed Pruitt she was a Florida fan. He asked to see the football and uncapped his sharpie.

He proceeded to write “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” on the ball.

“That’s what you’re gonna owe me when we beat Florida,” he said, handing the ball back with a laugh.

He also helped replace a signed Josh Dobbs football for a patient whose ball was lost in the tornadoes that ripped through the mid-state area in early 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in America.

The pandemic has put a halt to hospital visits. It also halted what’s become a tradition: The Vols hosting patients and their families enduring long hospital visits at a game in the fall. During the Vol Walk, Casey Pruitt hosts a tailgate and makes sure to be where players and her husband can see her so they know the fans at the Vol Walk associated with the hospital.

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“As soon as they see our group, they’ll start high-fiving, putting kids on their shoulders,” Casey Pruitt said. “It’s pretty special.”

She knew the realities of the pandemic meant those traditions wouldn’t be possible.

“It just was really bumming me out that we weren’t going to be able to do any of the things we normally do with patients and their parents. So I started thinking: What can I do for them?” Pruitt said. “So I thought, ‘Well, shoot, we can do cardboard cutouts of the kids. And it’ll be cool if they see their cutout during a televised game or they’ll get a picture from somebody like, ‘Hey, I saw you at the game!’”

Just before the season, Casey Pruitt called Smith and pitched her idea. Smith ran the idea past Allmon and Jimmy Delaney, Tennessee’s associate athletics director for fan experience and sales.

“Between the two of them, they sort of figured out the logistics,” Pruitt said.

Allmon jumped into action, running the idea past any families of patients to gauge their interest.

“I knew it would be a big hit,” Allmon said. “That same day, I started going room to room and asking who’d want to be a part of it and sent an email out to some of our families as well and we started getting pictures. I’m still getting more that I have to send to Ashley and Casey as soon as I get off the phone with you. Everybody’s been so excited.”

Before picture day, Pruitt also delivered a variety of Tennessee shirts for patients to wear when their photos were taken for the cutouts, instead of hospital gowns.

“The whole time, I was like, ‘Hey Jeremy, I think we’re gonna do this, do you like the idea?” Casey Pruitt said. “He thought the idea was awesome. He was like, ‘If anybody tells you no, let me know. I’ll step in.’ But thankfully, nobody told us no. Everybody was on board with it and thought it was a great idea.”

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So when the Vols took the field for their home opener against Missouri on Oct. 3, it had gone from idea to reality.

Tennessee reached out to Graphic Creations, a local sign company with offices downtown to produce the actual cutouts. The company is one of the university’s corporate sponsors, but it also frequently does printing jobs for the athletic department like Vol Network signage, parking passes and more.

With attendance numbers in flux throughout the offseason, the university and Graphic Creations had been discussing advertising banners in the stadium, fan cutouts for purchase and other options, but Graphic Creations president Jim Caughorn Jr. had his presses jump into action when he got the call for a different request.

“They came to me and asked, ‘Hey, can you help us come up with something with can print and put in the seats?” Caughorn said.

Tennessee sends Graphic Creations the photo, and they put it into a cut file before loading that file onto a flatbed printer. The photo is printed onto 10 millimeter corrugated plastic, similar to a real estate or political sign. Then, they drill and install grommet holes before using a router cutter to give the photo its final shape.

The final products are about two feet by two feet. On game day, Tennessee puts the cutouts in the seats and secures them through the grommet holes via a zip tie so they won’t tip over or blow away from a gust of wind.

On Thursday afternoon, Graphic Creations received another round of photos. They expected to deliver ready-to-install cutouts by Friday morning.

In a college football season in which so many traditions programs and their fans hold dear aren’t possible, Tennessee has found a way to establish at least one new tradition.

“It was so nice to see those kids,” Casey Pruitt said. “It put a big smile on my face.”

(Top photo: Courtesy of Tennessee Athletics)

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