COLLIERVILLE --- One had a rule created just because his on-field exploits were deemed counterproductive to the league.

The other owns a play so synonymous in the first-century history of that uniform that it undoubtedly will evolve in lore across the next hundred years.

Oh, and a Super Bowl ring.

Meet the football Haydens, Aaron and Chase.

Chase Hayden is a Rivals.com four-star recruit still carving his own legacy, which includes the unprecedented feat this past year of sweeping the state of Tennessee’s Mr. Football and Mr. Basketball awards in his division.

He’s the same Chase Hayden who, simply put, was too good for his peers --- and even the kids a bit older than him --- in his youth-league days.

“I can remember because the part he’s not telling is that I’ve wanted him to be great since he was the age of 5 and playing with 8-year-olds,” proud father Aaron Hayden explained. “I was mad that they put him at receiver. And then as a running back, you’re like does my kid have it or does he not? I remember being in the end zone when he made like three or four cuts, and he was a 5-year-old but it was instinctive. And one of my buddies was a huge Tennessee fan and walked up and said, ‘He has it.’ And I was kind of thinking in my mind, ‘He might have it.’

“So the next year, they made all types of rules out here in Collierville because he had the ball so much and scored so many touchdowns. So they got a lot of ‘Chase Hayden Rules.’ Basketball, too.”

Added Chase, “You can’t score more than five or six touchdowns in a game or you’ve got to get pulled out. Or they wouldn’t count. I scored like eight or nine. They stopped counting them after five or six.”

Growing up in Detroit, Aaron Hayden never quite conquered his peers to that extent --- at least not until he became a prized national recruit out of Detroit’s Mumford High School.

Now his game-winning touchdown in Tennessee’s dramatic, come-from-behind 1991 triumph at Notre Dame stands with few comparable plays in Vols’ lore.

“My all-time favorite memory has to be two: the Notre Dame game and just remembering the NFL players and legends that were on that field at one time and actually having success against them,” said the elder Hayden, who starred at Tennessee in the early 1990s and then spent four years in the NFL. “Like Jerome Bettis is a friend of mine, so having success against them when I had kind of spurned Notre Dame in my recruiting and then actually winning the game and what that has meant to the history of Tennessee football. And how much longer that play has gotten. It was 42 yards. And now it’s like 85. I’m sure by the time I’m 60, it will be a 110 yards and that I started in the back of the end zone.

“So that’s mine and then just having that game, I always played well against Alabama. Looking back at it, I always played better in big games and not as well in the games that didn’t really count.”

However, he allowed his son to discover those exploits on his own terms. Which meant just a few short years ago for Chase Hayden.

“I really didn’t get into that until my ninth-grade year. I didn’t really understand how good he was,” said Chase, who last week released a top five that included Tennessee, Arkansas and South Carolina among others. “I used to watch people like Reggie Bush and Montario Hardesty. I didn’t know he actually played that much or was good like that. I’m not going to lie to you, I didn’t expect that.

“Like the ‘Miracle at South Bend,’ I didn’t really understand what they meant until my eighth-grade year. When I saw that, I was kind of like surprised. That’s what a lot of people would tell me, ‘You don’t know the Miracle at South Bend? Your dad had the game-winning touchdown on that little screen play.’ I was like, ‘I guess I need to look this up.’”

Though still in the early stages of his own promising football career, Chase Hayden has never yielded to conventional wisdom on the gridiron. His days of playing against much older competition are drawing to a temporary close, for now, simply because he’s closing in on his senior season at St. George’s.

But he’s been proving himself against any and all comers there for the past three years.

“My all-time favorite memory so far is my freshman year, we started off kind of slow and I think I was maybe 145 pounds soaking wet,” Chase, now 184, recalled. “I was playing running back, and so the whole season I was getting knocked around and stuff. I was kind of scared, didn’t want to play running back anymore. I thought I was just a DB.

“Then we got to like the second-to-last game, and it just started clicking. I had my first 100-yard game and then it’s been good ever since.”

All the touchdowns and yards amassed by his son, however, have not delivered what makes dad beam.

That’s found in Chase’s work ethic, which even the notoriously hard-nosed Aaron Hayden said he didn’t glean until a later age.

“I was talking to J.J. McCleskey and I talked to Todd Kelly about this. I think the guys who have kids that play, they all have something in common, and they’re not overwhelmed by the moment and they understand the process,” Aaron Hayden explained. “The results come from work. If I could say anything about Chase, he even has something I didn’t get till a later age because I had to do it because I had to change my environment. He’s like that, what you see now, he’s been like that since he was 7 years old. ‘Dad, let’s go run hills or jump rope.’ And I’ve been proud of him now because I don’t even have to go. He’ll be out here, I’ll pull up to pick up my other son and Chase is in the sandpit, jumping through the ropes and doing stuff I would want him to do. He doesn’t know this, but I’ll pull up sometimes and he doesn’t know I’m there and he’s doing it all.

“And then I saw him give an interview somewhere and they asked him what he had learned from me and he said, ‘Once I get there, no matter where I go, it all starts over. Nobody is a four-star, five-star or anything. We’re all the same and I’ve got to prove myself.’ I think as long as you understand, you have a chip and goal and you’re able to focus to get there. I don’t worry about him wherever he goes about competing, if he’s good enough we’ll figure that out. Competing and working hard, I don’t worry about that, and that’s the proudest thing I can say as a dad.”

Can Chase, perhaps, needle his old man about all those ‘Chase Hayden Rules’?

“Every time I try to taunt him, he’s like, ‘Well, I played in the NFL,’” Chase said. “So there’s nothing really I can say.”

Added Aaron, “I got a Super Bowl ring, too.”

That was Aaron Hayden, football player. These days, Aaron Hayden, football dad, seems to be having more fun than ever before while his eldest son chapters his own gridiron lore.