IRVING, TX - OCTOBER 26: Head coach Jon Gruden of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during a game against the Dallas Cowboys at Texas Stadium on October 26, 2008 in Irving, Texas. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

It’s a pretty common thing these days to hear Jon Gruden and the Tennessee Vols mentioned in the same sentence.

It’s well known among Vols fans that Jon Gruden met his wife, Cindy, when he was a graduate assistant under Johnny Majors at Tennessee.

Gruden’s brief tenure as an assistant at Tennessee is the basis of the annual “Grumors”.

There’s no doubt that Gruden is a huge fan of the Volunteers. You can hear the excitement in his voice any time a former Tennessee player makes a play on Monday Night Football. And Gruden always makes a point to visit Knoxville and support the program that gave him his start in coaching.

But what exactly did Gruden do during his time in Knoxville in the mid-to-late 80’s?

Well, according to his wife, a former UT cheerleader, he was a gofer for the coaching staff that was often sent to the strip near campus to get food. And he apparently accumulated a lot of parking tickets during this time, because of the not-so-great parking accommodations.

From the San Francisco Gate:

Cindy was a graduate student at Tennessee, past her days as a college cheerleader, when she met Jon, who was scratching along on the fringes of the Tennessee football program. “He was a gofer,” Cindy says today. “I know I was amazed at all the parking tickets he had at Tennessee. The coaches would send him down to The Strip (Knoxville’s main drag) to get something to eat for everybody, and of course parking was just terrible, so he’d just get a place and get a ticket. I don’t know if he ever paid all those tickets.”

All this time I envisioned Gruden in the film room, breaking down plays with Johnny Majors, or discussing offensive line assignments with Phillip Fulmer.

But in reality, Gruden was a 23 year old graduate assistant who was taking lunch orders and trying to make it back to his car before the Knoxville PD found him illegally parked.

Gruden’s obviously came a long way since his “gofer” days at Tennessee, but there’s no doubt he still has a strong affinity for Rocky Top.

I wonder, however, if his love for Knoxville was enough to pay off all those parking tickets once he hit it big in the NFL.

Perhaps that’s something Gruden can address on Monday Night Football, if this happens to make its way to the former Super Bowl winning coach.