In 1995, a source told me the Tennessee football team was involved in a phone fraud scandal.

Players had secured the credit card from a University of Tennessee tutor and made thousands of long-distance calls totaling thousands of dollars to family, friends, girlfriends and even a sex line in Europe.

As I pursued this story for the Knoxville News-Sentinel, I hit a roadblock. Players and coaches that I talked to all denied it. An administrator denied it.

I couldn’t crack the code. Nobody was admitting anything.

I went back to my source and said I wasn’t getting anywhere.

“Keep digging,” he said.

Eventually, a player acknowledged “something was going on.”

That was the impetus I needed to keep searching.

Still, I wasn’t able to get confirmation from anyone.

Finally, I decided I needed to talk to a higher up, someone not in the athletic department, someone I thought would shoot me straight.

I scheduled a meeting with Chancellor Bill Snyder.

As we sat down, I laid out the information I’d been told by a source.

Chancellor Snyder confirmed that the Tennessee football program was indeed being investigated for a phone fraud of huge proportions and said the probe had been going on for weeks. He then assigned me to one of his assistants who was overseeing the investigation.

Through the Freedom of Information Act, I secured the phone numbers of the callers and the numbers called. It was a massive undertaking to track down all of those numbers that took more than a week.

That’s not the point of this column.

The point is: I knew Chancellor Snyder would be forthright. I knew he wouldn’t lie to me. He was transparent when others weren’t.

Years later, Chancellor Synder, who famously played the Mighty Wurlitzer organ at the Tennessee Theatre for almost 40 years, gave me and some family members a tour of the iconic facility. He even played the organ.

And years later, he asked me several times to come speak to a small group of his friends at Club LeConte during lunch to talk sports, mainly about Tennessee. I was glad to oblige.

He offered me libations. I refused. I had to do a four-hour radio show those afternoons and couldn’t afford to slur my speech.

Synder passed away earlier this week. The Knoxville native was 93.

I’m sure many of his cohorts and faculty members and students have fond memories of him.

I certainly do. At a time when it was hard to get to the truth about a football issue, he didn’t dodge me.

He was honest. He had integrity.  He had values. He had common sense.

How can you not respect a man like that?

I will miss Chancellor Snyder.

Rest in Peace.

(Jimmy’s blogs are brought to you by Rick Terry Jewelry design in Farragut, he wants to be your jeweler; by Marcos Garza Law firm, he’s local and loyal; by Matlock Tires, a full service tire center with 5 locations to serve you; and by Rick McGill Airport Toyota, with a great selection of new and preowned vehicles).