KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Jeremy Seaton hasn't stopped shaking in the 48 hours since the Tennessee Volunteers won their game against Alabama.
"I couldn't get it off my mind," he said. "We've all been smiling. We all walked in today, with these just grins that you just can't get off of your face."
The feeling reminded him of 1998 — his freshman year at the University of Tennessee — and the excitement that followed.
"Everybody in that campus and in the immediate vicinity for a year, it was like, 'Go Vols!'" he said. "It was high fives. It was everything all the time."
It's why he wrote a letter on Facebook to the current class of Tennessee students.
"I hate to tell you this:
But that one sticks with you. For life.
No matter what happens from this point forward, you are now part of a club which carries a lifelong membership.
It was a Florida game for us in the fall of 1998, but yours is now memorialized on the 3rd Saturday in October, 2022.
We have pieces of those 1998 goal posts in our offices, we have chunks of that checkered 1998 Turf in ziplock bags in our gunsafes. We look at them often, and remember ourselves exactly where you are at this point in your life."
For Seaton, that point was when he met his best friends, TJ Anderson and Geoff Loose.
"Going to the University of Tennessee changed the entire course of my life," Anderson said. "We're all family and I couldn't ask for anything else."
That bond has lasted for 24 years. They spend weekends at each other's homes and raise their kids together as Vol fans.
They've all been in each other's weddings, with Jeremy officiating the one between Loose and his wife.
"These guys became my team, then we became family," Seaton said. "We met through '98, I mean, goodness gracious, what a season. You don't get many of those in a lifetime."
Seaton remembers being in the band his freshman year. He said the band assistants took their uniforms and hats because they knew they'd want souvenirs.
"We ran out of there literally in our underwear... we went straight to the dorms, got out of anything that says who you are and what you are," he recalled. "We grabbed some shorts and a shirt and as many beers as I could fit in a backpack."
Jeremy still treasures the piece of a goalpost he got on Cumberland Avenue that night.
Geoff Loose said he didn't have a choice but to rush the field as the fans behind him started pushing forward.
"It was the best seats of my college career. Section D, Row 4," he said. "I carried the goalposts, but I didn't get a piece of it... I do have some grass somewhere tucked away in my ticket stub."
TJ Anderson said the Florida win in 1998 was his first game after moving down from New Jersey.
"I talked to my dad. I remember screaming on the telephone with him and I couldn't talk the next day," Anderson said. "We didn't have the recorders or iPhones. We have our memories."
Those feelings are ones they'll never forget. They're confident the Vols of 2022 will remember the Alabama win for decades, too.
Jeremy said he hopes his letter captured those feelings well.
"As seasons come and go, your passion will as well, but it will never fade. When another night like last night rolls around, you’ll be hoarse for a week. You’ll watch the highlights all day the next day, and your passion will be renewed.
You are now, a Vol For Life.
Welcome.
We’ve been waiting for you."