Streaking came to the UT campus in 1974, with scores of reported incidents during the five-day period from February 28 to March 4. The first incident was on Thursday, February 28, when a group of some 50 streakers appeared sporadically at the Presidential Complex, a short way down from Massey Hall, where a large panty raid was in progress. A large crowd gathered to watch the streakers and cheer them on with calls of “Streak! Streak! Streak!” On Friday night, in-the-buff bicyclists and motorcyclists rode around Presidential Court, and a group of male streakers jogged by Humes Hall, to the cheers of female residents.
The following Saturday (March 2) one male student streaked down Cumberland Avenue, torch (a Fourth-of-July-style sparkler) in hand, to the cheers of approximately 350 onlookers, and one female streaker responded to the challenge of a Cumberland Avenue tavern that offered free beer to any female who would come in unclothed and get it by jumping from her car, running in, and running back out, beer in hand.
“Wild Man,” the most famous of the streakers, said in a TV news interview that he read in the papers about streaking on other campuses and, not to be outdone, streaked on campus on February 28 until he met a car some blocks away and then made his getaway. The media gave the fad full coverage. Radio stations gave the time and whereabouts of streaking festivities.
On Saturday and Sunday, police began blocking off parts of Cumberland Avenue and making arrests. On Monday an estimated five thousand people turned up on the Strip, and at the conclusion of the night’s activities, the area was a scene of beer cans, paper cups, and property damage—mostly to roofs of businesses where onlookers climbed up for a better view. The bull atop Sam & Andy’s restaurant sustained damage. Five students were arrested for “common law lewdness by indecent exposure.” The following night, rain and dozens of Knoxville police brought the streaking epidemic to a virtual close, with the last word had by Walter Cronkite, who called Knoxville the “streaking capital of the world.”
During the 1974 events, former football player J. G. Lowe indicated to the Daily Beacon that streaking was “old stuff”—that in 1921, a member of the football team stripped and made a “bare bottom run” around the track for a $1.50 bet. Dean Massey, alerted by women in a nearby residence, met the streaker in the dressing room before he could get dressed and told him not to attend class the next morning because he was no longer a student at UT.
In May 1977 streaking returned with a nude basketball game outside Melrose Hall, attended by a crowd of onlookers, and a second night of isolated runs across the campus.