Love of the game and of a team often leads to passionate displays of fandom with chants, signs and lots team spirit gear.
For one couple, it led to their newborn triplets names.
Nancy Adams and Jeffery Steele welcomed two boys and a baby girl on Aug. 3, but it’s the names given to the Steele triplets that have gained them attention.
Life-long Tennessee fan Jeffery managed to convince Nancy, a Vanderbilt Commodores fan herself, to a Volunteers theme.
“We’ve always been UT fans on this side of the family,” grandmother Sherri Steele said. “ … Jeffery was sitting around thinking ‘I want to center it around UT.’”
The two boys are named Knox and Neyland, for the city where father Jeffery grew up and the famous UT stadium. The baby girl’s name of Tennessee Grace took a bit more for the couple to come up with.
Nancy originally had a different first name picked out for her baby girl up until her baby shower when a cousin told her that Tennessee was the name of her great-grandmother.
Tennessee was a named that Nancy and Jeffery had discussed prior to that conversation but the family connection and tie-in with the twins sold the name for Nancy, said Sherri.
Baby Tennessee Grace’s middle name is also tied to the older sisters Hope and Faith, the couple’s 9-year-old twins.
And now, as a new dad, Love will take the field Sunday after a whirlwind week to try to help the Seahawks earn another victory that would be crucial for their playoff hopes.