New Tennessee support staffer Kerry Stevenson

The Alabama Connection at Tennessee continues to grow.

Alabama Director of Player Development Kerry Stevenson is set to join the Vols in a “support staff” role, according to a Tuesday night report from AL.com's Matt Zenitz.

Stevenson has been with the Crimson Tide since 2013 after spending a decade as the head coach at Vigor High School in Mobile-area Prichard, Ala., where he won 85 games and one state championship.

Tennessee’s connections with Third Saturday in October rivalry with Alabama unsurprisingly have grown since former Crimson Tide player, defensive backs coach and defensive coordinator Jeremy Pruitt took the head-coaching position in Knoxville. Pruitt’s served as Alabama’s defensive coordinator from 2016-17, and Stevenson also spent both of those seasons with the Tide.

Several assistants and support-staffers have made the trip up Interstates 59, 24 and 75 from Tuscaloosa to Knoxville in the Pruitt era.

Tennessee’s new defensive coordinator, Derrick Ansley, came to Knoxville after serving as defensive backs of the Oakland Raiders, but Ansley went to Oakland after working for Pruitt and Nick Saban at Alabama.

Stevenson has at least one major hobby away from the football field. He’s a lifelong fan and writer of poetry, and recently he published a book of those poems called “Inspirations in Life … Inspired by Faith, Family, Friends and Football.”

“I’d never thought about writing a book. Never,” said Stevenson told AL.com last month at a book signing in Mobile. “But I used to write poems to motivate and inspire people, encourage them. And it got to the point that I started sharing them with people, and they wanted me to. So, all I would do is ask them to give me a title.

“One lady told me, ‘Coach, this is a masterpiece. Every kid in the country needs this.’”

Stevenson referred to his job at Alabama as a “life coach” position, and he said he’s been motivated to help young people since he was young, and it took a “village” to raise him after his single mother had a “nervous breakdown.”

From that point forward, Stevenson told AL.com he felt a calling to help young men who needed it.

“Kerry Stevenson is a man of God that’s been sent to love, nurture, strengthen, motivate, inspire and encourage other people,” he said. “I’m blessed. God has put me in a place to mentor some young men and try to guide and steer them in the right direction. Because a lot of those kids that we have to mentor every day, God has already sent me through those situations they’re going through.

“My job is to make sure those guys get to where they need to be as far as class, tutoring … I make sure they get their degree.

“They call it ‘player development,’ but I call it the ‘life coach.’”