Tennessee football: Top 10 Vols who never played in the NFL

Everybody’s favorite color commentator with Bob Kesling for Tennessee football was a legend on the field for Doug Dickey before getting into the booth. In fact, his legendary status remains unchanged in the nearly 50 years since he played.

Priest remains the all-time school leader in interceptions with 18. He was part of a secondary that was an interception machine during those Dickey years, which included Mike Jones and Bill Young and, in his final year, Conrad Graham. Those are the four career leaders in interceptions for the school. And he also played with Bobby Majors.

However, Priest was the one to play with all of them and the difference maker. He was an elite talent and, with Graham and Majors, led the school to an SEC record for a team in interceptions in a season with 36.

After all of that, though, Priest did not follow in Majors’s footsteps and go to the NFL. He worked as an assistant coach for a couple of years. And as a guy who actually prioritized academics in school, he went to UT Law School and practiced law all the way until the late 1990s before finding his next calling, being a color analyst for the Vols.

So Priest has worn a lot of hats that really have nothing to do with the NFL. But he remains a great player in school history nonetheless. And his career accomplishments are nothing to ignore. Priest was a huge reason for Tennessee football’s incredible success in the late 1960s.