The funny story will remain sealed; Mark Elder has been around Mike DeBord long enough to both have a laugh-track and understand revealing much about it could make for extra coffee duty in staff meeting rooms.

But want to talk about the influences of Tennessee's new offensive coordinator? Elder pretty vividly makes clear what DeBord has helped infuse into the Vols' offense.

"I do have a funny story on DeBo, and I'm going to keep that one to myself," Elder joked, then explained DeBord's impact through two months. "DeBo is an outstanding coach and an outstanding teacher. Motivation is certainly there as well; he's got a lot of fire, and I think that comes out. Passion for the game. Guys can see that in the way that he presents to the unit, and you can see his fire and passion. I think that carries over to the way that people are approaching things.

"I think the transition has been seamless as far as that's concerned. He's been a part of this type of an offense for a long time and a lot of what's being done here stems all the way back to when Coach Jones worked with DeBo in the past. There's a long history intertwined there."

For his part, DeBord would much rather simply credit the Vols' players. Hired to replace Mike Bajakian in early February, DeBord has worked to pass along the knowledge he's accumulated in coaching for parts of the past five decades.

"First of all, I think being new they haven't heard me talk or been around me; they didn't know what I was about, probably. We talked a lot about being a mental champion and a physical champion, about being tough," DeBord said. "Everything that goes into those two areas to becoming a championship player and how championship players make a championship offensive unit or team. So it was really talking about my experiences in those areas and what it takes to make that kind of a player.

"Their attention; I told Butch when I interviewed, when he addressed players the attention they gave was amazing. Sometimes you see coaches talk to guys and they're looking all over the place. These players are eye-to-eye, all the time. Just the attention that these kids give all the time is outstanding. They want to make this next jump, and that's what's exciting to me."

DeBord's instant comfort-level with the Vols' staff hasn't gone unnoticed by the players he's now mentoring, either. The first guy to hire Butch Jones at the Division I level years ago at Central Michigan, DeBord had a first-hand working knowledge of nearly a half-dozen of Tennessee's assistant coaches.

"They're not going to just hire a random guy, obviously. But they've had chemistry with him so they can just kind of pick up where they left off," said sophomore tight end Ethan Wolf. "So that's big, the chemistry between the coaches. Now he doesn't have to worry about familiarizing himself with the coaches; now it's just trying to get to know the players and their strengths and how to win ballgames here."

Stories of DeBord spending countless time going over every aspect of a given play --- before camp even opened --- have been circulating the Anderson Training Center now for weeks. With his group more than one-third of the way through his first spring, DeBord kept a priority on meeting time with the offensive coaches on the heels of practices to ensure the Vols fine-tune their sets as much as possible.

"One of the things I love is not only coaching the players but we'll come in the mornings after practice and break down every play that we ran the day before in practice from 7 to 10," DeBord said. "We took like 15 minutes and went over like just one technique, just so that we're all on the same page coaching-wise."

That meticulous approach has aided the Vols in what both multiple players and coaches, including Jones, have termed a largely "seamless" spring transition.

"We're definitely pushing the tempo," quarterback Josh Dobbs said after Saturday's work inside Neyland Stadium. "It definitely helps that we have more experience across the board. We're able to push the tempo. People know the plays like the back of their hand more than last year, so we're able to go faster and do different things on the offense and the pass game.

"We're installing various concepts. We're definitely growing as an offense. We're growing the arsenal that we have."

Still, Elder has another story. About the time DeBord helped Elder land his first job.

"I always had tremendous respect for Coach DeBord. I was a graduate assistant at Michigan when he was offensive coordinator there, and he did a tremendous job," Elder said. "I always thought he was one of the best coaches I had been around.

"He was instrumental actually in helping me get on with Coach Jones. He was my first connection with Coach Jones when I got on at Central Michigan."

Now, about that funny one …