At the beginning of every year football fans look foward to one thing: the Super Bowl. People across the nation spend lots of money on chips, salsa, cold beer and soft drinks for Super Bowl parties. This year UT students will not only be watching the Super Bowl, 12 will be working for it.

Super Bowl XLII will take place Feb. 3, 2008 in Arizona. Students from UT's College of Business Administration, College of Education, Health and Human Sciences and College of Communication and Information will work behind the scenes of the Super Bowl in an effort to learn how large events like this are put together. 

University of Tennessee Athletics, along with St. Mary's Health Systems, Bacon & Company, Adidas Partners in Sports, UT MBA program and the respective colleges make this possible.

The team is called TEAM UT. It will be lead by Fritz G. Polite, director of the Institute for Leadership, Ethics & Diversity (I-LEAD). Along with UT students, two staff memebers from the University of Memphis and one student from Lane College will be on the team. They leave for Pheonix on Jan. 29 and will be returning to Knoxville on Feb. 4.

These unique opportunities will give our students the chance to compete at the hightest level. We are very blessed and appreciate the students and their respective programs. Fritz G. Polite, director of the Institute for Leadership, Ethics & Diversity

"These unique opportunities will give our students the chance to compete at the hightest level. We are very blessed and appreciate the students and their respective programs," Polite said in a UT press release on Monday.

Graduate students from the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences; Kevin McMahon, Fraser Boyd, Neil Bishop, Zach Franz and Chanel Lattimer will be participating. Graduate student, Drew Davenport from the College of Business Administration, will aslo participate. Also participating from the College of Business Administration and the Collge of Education, Health and Human Sciences are students Stephanie Dawkins and Chase Elis.

Undergraduate students Justin Price Shaw, from the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences, and Keri Vaughn, Kyle Blackburn and Erin Hoskins from the College of Communication and Information will participate. Ryan Lutrell and Jack Magolio will represent the University of Memphis along with staff members Dr. Richard Southall and Deborah Southall. Chris Wright from Lane College will also attend.