Paul Bain stepped outside the locker room to make a very important phone call to his mom.
"I didn't want my teammates to see me cry or anything," Bain said.
The 6-foot-5, 290 pound defensive lineman told his mom he'd achieved a huge goal. He earned a scholarship at the University of Tennessee.
"She just started breaking down crying, I started tearing up a little bit, I'm not going to say I cried but it was very emotional for all of us," Bain said with a smile.
The Powder Springs, Ga. native spent three years on the Vols roster as a walk-on after transferring from Division II Tusculum. He worked at Champs Sports in the mall and on a horse farm to put himself through school.
"During the season I would pick up hours right after practice. I didn't have a set time of when we'd be done with practice so whenever I got out of practice I'd text my manager and see if he'd have any hours available for me, (often) he would," Bain explained.
"We would just work together. I'm so thankful for having a good work relationship with my managers at Champs and they've been nothing but supportive for me and my dreams."
Bain hasn't put in his two weeks notice yet but he won't have to work at Champs anymore. Last Tuesday he walked up to Jeremy Pruitt's office to check if any scholarships were open and the timing was right.
"There were rumors around the locker room and stuff like that and I talked to him and he said, 'I actually just got off the phone, you got put on scholarship.' I just went over there at the perfect time and he told me," Bain said. "I was very relieved, felt like a ton of weight had been lifted off my shoulders."
Bain had to try out for the team in 2015 after arriving from a redshirt season at Tusculum. The previous Vols coaching staff put him through position drills and called him the next day to inform him he'd made the team as a walk-on.
He first saw the field as a redshirt sophomore, recording two tackles in a win over Tennessee Tech. Bain came up with a huge play in the season opener in 2017, blocking Georgia Tech's potential game-winning field goal in the final seconds of regulation to force overtime where the Vols won 42-41. He started 2018 with a fumble recovery in the opener against West Virginia.
"I want to motivate other people to believe in their dreams and continue to pursue that anything is possible and I hope my story can affect somebody," Bain said. "Somebody who's down or doesn't think they can accomplish something they can look at my story and think, I'm just a kid who worked at Champs, on a farm, wasn't recruited very much and now I'm playing in front of 102,000 people."
The redshirt senior is majoring in biology and is striving to open his own dental practice and help people in rural areas get access to dental care.