Thomas Terrill Siler, Jellico native, was editor of the Mugwump, managing editor of the Orange and White, and sports editor of the Volunteer. After graduating from the university in 1931, he worked as a reporter for the Knoxville News Sentinel and later for the Associated Press. He worked in Associated Press Bureaus in Nashville and Chicago before joining the Chicago Sun as a sports reporter in 1942. He returned to Knoxville in 1949 as columnist and sportswriter for the Knoxville News Sentinel, and in 1957 he became sports editor of the paper. Siler wrote books on UT football and one on Tennessee cities and villages. He published articles in the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s, Sports Illustrated, Look, and Parade. He covered the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.
He was inducted into the National Sports Hall of Fame in 1972, the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in 1976, and the Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame in 1984. He has been inducted into the Tennessee Newspaper Hall of Fame. He was president of The Football Writers and was twice president of the UT Alumni Association.
A Society of Professional Journalists’ scholarship has been established in his name in the College of Communication and Information.