When Johnny Majors came back to his alma mater to be head UT football coach in 1977, he brought Pittsburgh’s head athletic trainer, Thomas J. “Tim” Kerin with him. Kerin served as UT’s head trainer from 1977 until he died of an aortic aneurysm on August 3, 1992. A memorial service was held in Neyland-Thompson Sports Center, attended by hundreds. At the service Athletic Director Doug Dickey announced that Kerin would be inducted into the UT Football Hall of Fame. The training room in Neyland-Thompson is named for him.
Kerin earned the bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mathematics from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the MEd in physiology of exercise from the University of Pittsburgh. He designed the training facility in the Neyland-Thompson Football Facility, which was posthumously named for him, and conducted summer camps for aspiring trainers. In June 1993 he was inducted into the National Athletic Trainers Hall of Fame for his outstanding career in the field. In 1993 also, the Tennessee Athletics Trainers Society selected Kerin as the Gene Smith/Mickey O’Brien College Athletic Trainer of the Year. He was inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in 2001.
The Tim Kerin Memorial Scholarship has been established in cooperation with the Department of Athletics, the Athletic Training Education Program at the University of Pittsburgh and the Optimist Club of Wilmerding, Pennsylvania, to assist worthy students in obtaining an undergraduate degree in athletic training at the University of Pittsburgh. A memorial food drive was begun at UT in fall 1992.