Ryan Coggins had never heard the band before.

He sat in the radio booth at Neyland Stadium during Tennessee's game against Kentucky on Nov. 2 with a headset on, his right ear covered so he could hear the Vol Network broadcast and his left ear open. He wanted to hear the crowd for the first time. He wanted to feel it.

TALK ABOUT IT IN THE ROCKY TOP FORUM

Coggins, 20, has been blind since birth. He met Bob Kesling, the Vol Network's longtime football play-by-play broadcaster when the Big Orange Caravan--Tennessee athletics' offseason speaking circuit throughout the state--came to the Kingsport back in May.

Coggins started listening to Kesling call Tennessee football games about four years ago. What started as a break from listening to reruns of Bob Kingsley's Country Top 40 turned into a fandom that has made tuning into the Vol Network every Saturday a ritual.

"I really enjoyed listening to it, so I continued on listening to it," Coggins said.

When he heard that Kesling would be nearby, he took an Uber to the Meadowview Convention Center in Kingsport.

Among the speakers were Tennessee head football coach Josh Heupel and men's basketball coach Rick Barnes. But Coggins wanted to meet Kesling, the man behind the voice that had become a routine part of his Saturdays in the fall.

"They introduced me to him and I noticed that he had a cane," Kesling said. "I could tell that he was blind, so I asked him who he was there with. He said he came by himself. That impressed me... He said, ‘I never miss a game on the radio. You’re my lifeline to Tennessee sports and I’ve always wanted to meet you.’"

When Coggins told Kesling that he had never attended a game at Neyland Stadium, Kesling said that he would make it happen. Then he asked for Coggins' phone number.

"I gave him my number and I thought, you know, he probably won’t call me back," Coggins said.

A few months later, Coggins' phone rang. It was Kesling. He offered passes to Coggins and his grandmother and her husband for the Kentucky game. They sat in the second row of the radio booth inside the of the press box, behind Kesling as Tennessee overcame a first half deficit to beat the Wildcats, 28-18.

Coggins heard the fireworks and the Pride of the Southland Marching Band, barely even background noise for him when listening on the radio from his home in Johnson City. He also heard Kesling at work, now just feet away from him.

"He had just never experienced a Tennessee game like that. I looked up there and he was smiling most of the game," Kesling said. "At the end of the game, I had to hurry down to do the postgame and I said, ‘Ryan, how was it?’ He said, ‘This is the greatest night of my life.’ Sometimes, what we do, we take it for granted, but for other people, it’s magic and it was magic that night.”

For 25 years that is what Kesling, 70, has provided on the airwaves from Tennessee's "statewide stadium," joining a long line of storytellers for the Vol Network over the last 75 years that include Lindsey Nelson, George Mooney and John Ward.

He has at least three more games to tell those stories in football and another 25-plus for men's basketball before he hangs up his headset and signs off for the final time.

Kesling will retire in April, completing a journey that began with a chance meeting inside of the Tennessee football offices 52 years ago. This is a story about taking a chance, making some breaks and becoming the "Voice of the Vols."

Bob Kesling didn't know anybody in Knoxville.

He strode the University of Tennessee campus one day in the spring of 1972 while his friend, Jeff Zingerman and his father met with men's basketball coach and family friend Ray Mears about potentially joining the Vols as a walk on.

Kesling, who tagged along on the trip from Kettering, Ohio near Dayton, decided to walk into the Tennessee football offices and do the same.

He was a fullback at Fairmont West High School and had a couple of offers from smaller colleges in Ohio and some letters of interest from Bowling Green and Toledo. Now he was walking through the door of the building that housed one the most historic football programs in the SEC without any game film or proof that he even played high school football.

"I decided I would go down to the football office on a wim," Kesling recalled.

Within minutes, Kesling was standing in the office of Tennessee head coach Bill Battle.

Battle, who was heading into his third season after back-to-back 10 and 11-win seasons, told Kesling about the program, then accompanied him down the hall to the freshman running backs coaches offices where he met former Tennessee players-turned-coaches Curt Watson and Don McLeary.

"I was just mesmerized," Kesling said. "They showed me Tennessee’s offense and what it was going to look like with Condredge Holloway and all that kind of stuff. What the fullback does in the kind of offense that they’re going to be running. I thought, ‘Well, gee, that’s really great.’"

Battle handed Kesling a workout sheet and told him that if he got admitted into the school, he could join the team as a walk on. Then Kesling bolted to the nearest phone and made a call to Kettering. He wanted to tell his father.

Kesling's father, Devon, was a former drum major at Ohio State and if his son was going to walk on at a major college football program, why couldn’t it be the Buckeyes?

"I said, ‘ Dad, it’s cheaper for me to go to Tennessee out of state than it is to go to Ohio State, in-state,'" Kesling said. "And his next comment was, ‘Go Vols.’"

That meeting with Battle was the only impression that Kesling had of Tennessee when he arrived on campus as a freshman that fall. His first practice was mostly spent taking tackling dummies to different position groups.

Kesling ran all over the practice field those first few days. When he'd return to the freshmen huddle and not know a play, the coaches would send him on another errand run. He knew what they were trying to do.

"Here I am, just an OK high school player from Ohio and I’m at an SEC school playing football for the Tennessee Volunteers," Kesling said. "What they were trying to do was trying to run me off to see if I really wanted to do that and how tough you were. So, I was able to withstand all that."

Kesling played in freshman games that season, which were typically played on Thursdays and included games against Georgia Tech, Alabama and Notre Dame. He carried the ball nine times for 36 yards.

In an article written by Marvin West that ran in the Knoxville News-Sentinel on Oct. 18, 1972--three days before the Tennessee varsity team played Alabama--Kesling's name was listed among freshmen players that stayed after one practice at Neyland Stadium that week to block against varsity defensive backs.

"The Vols tried to hold their ground without getting knocked off their feet," West wrote. "It wasn't easy. Tim Fitchpatrick, Buck Sherman and Bob Kesling threw themselves into the drill as if trying for the Jacobs Trophy."

Kesling now quips about his "brilliant" football career, which didn't go beyond his freshman year after deciding to focus on other pursuits. But it did set in motion a lifelong relationship with Tennessee.

“I’m glad we got him because he turned out to be a great asset for the university," Battle said.

The box seats behind the dugout at the Bill Meyer Stadium were empty.

Bob Kesling was at a Double-A Knoxville Sox (now the Knoxville Smokies) game with some friends in 1973 when an usher tried to boot them from the rusty, unused seats that cost 50 cents more than what the tickets they paid for.

Kesling wanted to see the owner. He walked into the main office and found Sox owner Neil Ridley. He walked out with a job.

"I expressed my displeasure," Kesling said. "Before I left, he offered me a part time job in the summer. So, I started working for the Knoxville Sox. I put up the flags and cooked hot dogs, sold tickets, took guys to the doctor and made sure uniforms were laundered. Anything around the ballpark that had to be done, I was going to do that."

Kesling loved baseball and even had dreams of becoming a Major League Baseball general manager, so he was thrilled with the $100-a-week gig. The job also offered one of his most important connections.

Ernie Robertson was the photographer for The Bill Battle Show--the coaches show that aired statewide on the Sundays following games. Because minor league teams didn't often employ a pitching or hitting coach in those days, Robertson offered his services for the Sox, getting prospects on film so they could watch themselves. That's where he met Kesling.

Kesling was fascinated with the process. He would go with Robertson to the studio on campus where he would cut up the film and show it to the players on a projector screen. One day, Robertson offered him another job.

"Ernie said, ‘We need a film editor on The Bill Battle Show.’ Would you want to do that since you know something about football?’ And I said, 'Sure,'" Kesling said. "So when I was in school, that’s what I was doing. It was not a very glamorous position. They would film all of the games and they’d stop the camera and put a little flash frame on the film and then I’d take a pair of scissors and I’d cut the flash frame out and glue it back together. It wasn’t as if I was making any kind of decisions about what was going to go on the show or anything.

"My job was just to get the film back together so that John Ward and Ernie could pick out the highlights they were going to use."

John Ward was the football and men's basketball play-by-play voice for the Vol Network and the host of the coaches show. Before the 1976 football season, he gave Kesling a spot on the broadcast team as a spotter.

Kesling's job was to tell Ward what players made tackles, recovered fumbles or deflected passes before he announced their names on the radio broadcast. It was his first introduction to the radio booth at Neyland Stadium and it gave him a front row seat to a masterclass in broadcasting every week.

"John was brilliant," Kesling said. "He was just extremely intelligent and really had a great mastery of the English language and had a flair for the dramatic, which was really special. That’s what made his broadcasts so special. He would come with a clipboard and he’d have 20 pages of typed out, written notes.

"He might use 20% of it, but it was his preparation that made him so good, and that’s what he told me."

Bob Kesling walked over to John Ward on the broadcast ramp overlooking the court at Stokely Athletic Center.

Kesling was calling basketball games for the Lady Vols for WIVK in Knoxville in 1978, just four seasons after then-Pat Head took over as the head coach of the women's basketball program.

Kesling had only recently graduated, but was now the sports director for the station after working there as a student. Months before, he was getting ready to move to Nashville before a parking lot meeting with Bobby Denton, the station's general manager and longtime Neyland Stadium PA announcer.

"I told him I was going to get a baseball job," Kesling said. "He said, ‘We just bought a station in Nashville and our sports guy is going over there, so why don’t you be our sports director?’ I said, ‘OK.’ That’s kind of how it started. So if Bobby hadn’t stopped me, I would have gone to Nashville and might have tried to pursue a career of being a baseball general manager. As it turned out, I started to make my way through radio."

WIVK didn't carry Tennessee football games at the time, but to prove their worth, Kesling called the Lady Vols, who had just started turning the corner, finishing third in the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women--the predecessor to the NCAA Tournament--the year before in 1976-77.

"A lot of people weren’t really interested in doing that because there might be 150 people at Stokely Center," Kesling said. "Who’s listening? And how much interest is there really in women’s basketball? Nobody could have envisioned that Pat Head would turn into Pat Summitt. But I didn’t view it as women’s basketball. I viewed it as SEC basketball. I just wanted reps."

Kesling got reps wherever he could find them. He called football games at Farragut High School and traveled with the Lady Vols, eventually calling the first six national championships that the program won under Summitt between 1987-98.

"Pat was really gracious to me and every time I tried to quit, she wouldn’t let me," Kesling said. "I had to keep going. You’re not going to tell Pat Summitt no. I’m not that stupid.”

Before Kesling voiced one of the most incredible runs in sports, he was calling the first of a double dose of Tennessee basketball in the winter of 1978. After the Lady Vols game, the men's team was slated to follow and Ward walked into the broadcast booth to take over.

Kesling saw another window of opportunity.

“I was kind of a hot shot. I thought, here I am this young guy, getting started in my early 20s and doing Lady Vols basketball," Kesling said. "I taped part of my game. So before (Ward) started the Vol Network broadcast for men’s game, I walked up and said, ‘Mr. Ward, would you be willing to critique my tape and kind of give me some hints?’ And he said, ‘I’d be happy to.’ So he opened up his orange briefcase and put it in there."

Kesling didn't hear back from Ward for a couple of weeks. It wasn't until he saw him again after another Lady Vols game that he confidently approached him about the tape.

Ward offered some subtle criticism.

"I walked up to him and I said, ‘Mr. Ward, did you have a chance to critique my tape?’ He said, ‘Yes. Yes I did,'" Kesling said. "He went over and opened his briefcase, handed me the tape back and said, ‘Try advertising.’ And then turned and walked away.

"But I got the message right away: ‘You’re not a big hot shot. You better get better real quick.’ It came through loud and clear."

Bob Kesling has thought about the conversation for 25 years.

Lindsey Nelson's words have been at the center of every broadcast Kesling has done since taking over the play-by-play for football and men's basketball for the Vol Network in 1999.

After Ward retired following a 30-year career, the opportunity for Kesling, who had been the sports director at WBIR-TV in Knoxville since 1980, was too good to pass up, no matter how high the bar he had to reach was.

Ward was in a similar position when George Mooney retired in 1967 and so was Mooney after Nelson left to begin a legendary broadcasting career with Notre Dame football for 13 years and the New York Mets for another 17.

"(Nelson) gave me some great advice," Kesling said. "He said, ‘Just remember. The story is the story and you’re not the story. Tell the story.” I always remember that. That’s kind of the way I’ve tried to approach it. I try to back myself out of all of this because I’m not really important. The game is important and the people that listen, they want to know how their team is doing and what the score is and who’s got the ball.

"They don’t really care what you had for lunch, or how your flight was or if the booth was crappy or if it was hot. They don’t care about any of that. They want to know how their team is doing.”

For 25 years, Kesling has provided that and more for fans.

Ryan Coggins is one of them, living and dying by every play that he can only hear Kesling describe. There are others, too that tune in, even when they can watch on TV or right in front of them from the bleachers.

Next season, it will be another voice for another generation of Tennessee fans. But those old broadcasts will still be replayed and talked about as much as the players and plays happening in them. Few places revere their heroes like Tennessee.

"He took over for John Ward when he retired and honestly, I don’t think they could have found a better guy to do it," Coggins said. "This new guy, he’s going to have big shoes to fill.”

Kesling stood in the north end zone at Neyland Stadium during halftime of Tennessee's game against Mississippi State two weeks ago, flanked by family and more than 102,000 others. Where ears have been fixated on him for over two decades, now it was eyes.

He was being honored on the field, days after announcing his retirement. In his mind, he was reflecting. All of this, he thought to himself, because he walked into Bill Battle's office.

"I was standing there looking around the stadium on Saturday night. I’ve got my family there," Kesling said. "I just thought, it’s amazing that in 1972 in August, I come to Tennessee. I don’t know anybody in the whole state and now at the end of 25 years doing this, I’m out here in Neyland Stadium and people are applauding. It’s just an incredible story and it’s really kind of unbelievable.”

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