Sports Renaissance Man is a new-age digital publication covering the Tennessee Volunteers. Each day, Chase Thomas (‘22 UTK alum) writes various columns, features, and other pieces on the Vols. In addition to his written work that you will find here at SRM, Chase hosts a daily Tennessee Vols sports podcast called The Chase Thomas Podcast that features all kinds of great Tennessee Vols media members, current Vol athletes, VFLs, and much more.
Chase Thomas is…The Sports Rennaissance Man
Who Is The Sports Renaissance Man?
My name is Chase Thomas, and I’m the Founder & Publisher of SRM here on Substack and the host of The Chase Thomas Podcast.
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The Chase Thomas Podcast
“Chase Thomas is one of my favorite up-and-coming guys in sports media. He covers a little bit of anything and everything in the sports world, a 2017 sports renaissance man.” - Brandon Anderson
I am originally from Stone Mountain, GA. (Parkview forever!) I graduated from the University of North Georgia with a bachelor’s degree in Journalism. I would later graduate from the University of Tennessee with a master’s degree in Strategic & Digital Communications as well. Along with my duties here SRM, I host Knoxville’s No. 1 independent Tennessee Volunteers podcast — The Chase Thomas Podcast.
From North Georgia to Tennessee, it was always meant to be for me.
(Here’s a photo of me below in the early ‘90s at a Tennessee vs. Vanderbilt game on the field at Neyland Stadium.)
Why Should You Care?
This is both important and weird for me to have to answer, but it is also something I should be able to answer if I want you, the reader, to want to read more and keep up with me.
You haven’t read me at ESPN, The Ringer, CBS Sports, the Knoxville News Sentinel, or the New York Times, but maybe you listened to my daily podcast on the Tennessee Volunteers and liked it? Or maybe you read one of my columns over there at TPL Tennessee and liked it? If that’s you, or you just happened to stumble upon this publication, I hope my lack of reps in larger publications doesn’t give you pause.
As a Stone Mountain native, I grew up racing to the driveway to check Georgia high school football scores and read sports pieces early on Saturday mornings in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution along with the local Gwinnett Daily Post. I grew up around elite high school football and my love for sports and sportswriting only grew from there. I memorized everything there was to know, or so I thought, about sports from the time I was around seven years old to the time I attended the University of Georgia’s journalism camp before my senior year of high school where a fellow camper referred to me as a “walking sports encyclopedia”, but not in a complimentary way I would later learn. I struggle to exist without a firm handle across all major sports. Whether it’s Friday Night Lights in East Tennessee or the Los Angeles Lakers, I stay on top of it all. I have to. It’s all I know.
This.
This thing.
This writing thing.
This is all I've ever wanted to do. Write professionally. I’m both too old to dream and too young to quit. I can’t imagine chasing anything else. I wouldn’t be happy doing anything else. Writing makes me happy. Typing on this keyboard on a blank canvas makes me happy.
In this publication, I promise I will write daily about the Tennessee Volunteers and I will do my damndest to write well. This is a completely different kind of Vols publication, and I hope you will join up for the ride.
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