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and he handed me $40,” Earps said. “It was enough to go to the movies and get ice cream.”
    Under NCAA rules, it was a violation to pay for recruits’ entertainment and food on unofficial visits. But Earps didn’t think much of being handed a few bucks for a night out. Kiffin was the head coach and certainly knew the rules. Besides, it wasn’t the first time that members of Orange Pride had been given money by members of Kiffin’s staff. On more than one occasion, coaches gave hostesses money for recruiting parties. Earps was personallyhanded $100 on one occasion and $200 on another. “I was given money by the coaches to get things for the party,” Earps said. “The coaches aren’t stupid. It’s not like they didn’t know what we were using the money for.”
    On March 13, Brown returned to Knoxville, and Earps accompanied him to a football scrimmage in Neyland Stadium. Afterward she took him to the movies. Then they went to Marble Slab Creamery, a popular ice cream shop at Market Square. It was another great weekend.
    Two days after returning home, Brown held a press conference at the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame, where he announced he would attend Tennessee. “I feel that’s the school that’s gonna prepare me the best to go to the next level,” he said.
    “I had a big role in recruiting Bryce Brown,” Earps said. “I was an influential part of his decision.”
    The press didn’t pick up on Earps’s role. But Kiffin’s staff certainly did. After Bryce Brown signed with Tennessee, Earps got a new nickname. One afternoon Condredge Holloway, the director of student-athlete relations and lettermen, approached her. In the early 1970s, Holloway became the first African-American quarterback to play in the SEC. He was a legend around Knoxville. Earps knew and respected him. She was taking in a Tennessee practice when Holloway approached her.
    “You know what you remind me of?” Holloway said.
    She just looked at him.
    “
The Closer
,” he said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Haven’t you ever seen the TV show
The Closer
?”
    Earps was confused. Holloway then described the television crime drama that starred Kyra Sedgwick as a tough LAPD interrogator with a knack for obtaining confessions that result in convictions. “She goes in and closes the case,” Holloway told Earps. “Nobody can figure something out and they bring her in. She’s the closer.”
    It was intended as a compliment, and that’s exactly how Earps took it. The nickname stuck. From that day on, every coach and every member of Orange Pride knew Earps as The Closer.

    When Bryce Brown committed to the Vols, Charlotte “Charli” Henry was a five-foot-six Tennessee sophomore with brown eyes and shoulder-length dark brown hair. She had grown up in a small town in West Tennessee famous for its Ripley tomatoes. One of her best childhood memories wasspending Saturday afternoons watching Tennessee football games with her father. It was the Peyton Manning era, and Henry decided back then that one day she wanted to be a member of Orange Pride. In the spring of 2009—right after Lacey Earps officially took over as the captain—she got her chance. Henry was one of two hundred girls who applied for the twenty openings.
    Beautiful and smart (her GPA was 3.77), Henry shone in her initial group interview, easily answering questions about UT history, naming the athletic director and head football coach and repeating her favorite UT chant. She got called back for a more rigorous individual interview with an athletic department official and two senior members of Orange Pride.
    To make a good impression, Henry went to Banana Republic, where she purchased a baby-blue top, chocolate-brown pants, a big brown belt and some hot-pink heels. When she went to the interview, she also made sure to wear her pearls. The interview lasted thirty minutes. Her final question was whether she had ever quit anything. Henry had played volleyball and tennis in high school.