Tennessee

Tennessee (ⁱ/tɛnᵻˈsiː/) (Cherokee: ᏔᎾᏏ, Tanasi) is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. Tennessee is the 36th largest and the 17th most populous of the 50 United States. Tennessee is bordered by Kentucky and Virginia to the north, North Carolina to the east, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi to the south, and Arkansas and Missouri to the west. The Appalachian Mountains dominate the eastern part of the state, and the Mississippi River forms the state's western border. Tennessee's capital and second largest city is Nashville, which has a population of 601,222. Memphis is the state's largest city, with a population of 653,450.

The state of Tennessee is rooted in the Watauga Association, a 1772 frontier pact generally regarded as the first constitutional government west of the Appalachians. What is now Tennessee was initially part of North Carolina, and later part of the Southwest Territory. Tennessee was admitted to the Union as the 16th state on June 1, 1796. Tennessee was the last state to leave the Union and join the Confederacy at the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War in 1861. Occupied by Union forces from 1862, it was the first state to be readmitted to the Union at the end of the war.

Tennessee Volunteers

The Tennessee Volunteers and Lady Volunteers are the 18 male and female varsity intercollegiate athletics programs that represent the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee. The Volunteers compete in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) as a member of the Southeastern Conference (SEC). In September 2011 Dave Hart, formerly the assistant athletic director at the University of Alabama, was introduced as Tennessee's new athletic director. Hart became the school's first athletic director in Tennessee history to oversee both the women's and men's athletic departments as they merged in June 2012 after which Joan Cronan, the former women's athletics director, became the senior adviser to Hart and Chancellor Jimmy Cheek.

Men's and women's teams with the exception of women's basketball are called the Volunteers (often shortened to "Vols") The Tennessee women's basketball team is called the Lady Volunteers ("Lady Vols"). These names come from the nickname of Tennessee, The Volunteer State.

Hail Mary

Also known as the Ave Maria (Latin) or Angelic Salutation, the Hail Mary is a traditional Christian prayer asking for the intervention of the Blessed Mother in the lives of individuals on Earth. In the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, a similar prayer is used in formal liturgies, both in Greek and in translations. It is also used by many other groups within the Catholic tradition of Christianity including Anglicans, Independent Catholics, and Old Catholics. Some Protestant denominations, such as Lutherans, also make use of a form of the prayer.

Based on the greeting of the archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary in the Gospel of Luke, the prayer takes different forms in various traditions. It has often been set to music, although the most famous musical expression of the words Ave Maria — that by Franz Schubert — does not actually contain the Hail Mary prayer.

Biblical source

The prayer incorporates two passages from Saint Luke's Gospel: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee," and "Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." In mid-13th-century Western Europe the prayer consisted only of these words with the single addition of the name "Mary" after the word "Hail," as is evident from the commentary of Saint Thomas Aquinas on the prayer.

College football

College football is American football played by teams of student athletes fielded by American universities, colleges, and military academies, or Canadian football played by teams of student athletes fielded by Canadian universities. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. No minor league farm organizations exist in American football. Therefore, college football is generally considered to be the second tier of American football in the United States; one step ahead of high school competition, and one step below professional competition. It is in college football where a player's performance directly impacts his chances of playing professional football. The best collegiate players will typically declare for the professional draft after 3–4 years of collegiate competition; with the NFL holding its annual draft every spring. 255 players are selected annually. Those not selected can still attempt to land an NFL roster spot as an undrafted free agent.