College football's best defensive lineman used to be scared stiff of a guy with the cuddly nickname of "Inka-Pooh."

It doesn't matter that at 6'7", 290, Tennessee's John Henderson outweighs Inka-Pooh by at least 60 pounds, and is at least eight inches taller. Year in, year out, nobody put the fear of you-know-who into him like Wheeler "Inka-Pooh" Henderson ("Inky" for short).

Inky is John Henderson's older brother. Inky, who used to play football, basketball and baseball, just turned 24. He's now in the construction business.

Back in high school, Henderson, who's two years younger, used to borrow Inky's blue Honda. "And every year somebody would steal that car," says high school and UT teammate Buck Fitzgerald. "He's always respected Inky, almost to the point that he fears Inky. I'd never seen Joe so scared."

One time a Nashville police officer was filling out a stolen vehicle report when he asked the distraught young Henderson, "Do you have insurance?"

"Yes, sir," said Henderson. "Blue Cross/Blue Shield."

His Pearl-Cohn High School hoops teammate, Ron Slay (who now plays for UT as well), was there, too. "Even the policeman busted out laughing," Slay says.

Says Henderson now: "Aw, man. You can't write that."

Too late.

No dummy, Fitzgerald told Henderson that the car must have been stolen by whoever Pearl-Cohn was playing that week. "Why don't you take it out on those guys?" Fitzgerald said.

And he did. Somebody was going to pay for Henderson having to tell Inky the bad news.

"After he started playing good, we started thinking: 'We need to steal his car every game,' " says Fitzgerald.

At least there was a happy ending. The cops found the car.

Gene Wojciechowski is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at gene.wojciechowski@espnmag.com.