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.