A dash onto the field, a shutter click and a Tennessee football photo for the ages | Toppmeyer

A moment like this called for bare chests.

So, friends Eli Austin and Eli Ferguson removed their shirts late in the fourth quarter Saturday night at Neyland Stadium as they prepared to storm the field if Tennessee triumphed over Alabama for the first time since 2006.

Austin watched with worry as Chase McGrath’s 40-yard field goal knuckled toward the goal posts in the south end zone as time expired.

“It was an ugly-looking kick,” Austin reflected Sunday. “It looked like a chicken trying to fly.”

McGrath’s kick had just enough oomph.

A 52-49 Vols upset of No. 1.

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Cue the celebration.

Austin and Ferguson made a mad dash to be among the first fans who hopped out of the stands and onto the field.

“It was like letting the gates down at a race,” said Austin, who, like Ferguson, is a senior at Central Magnet School in Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

“We just flew.”

Thousands joined them.

Within minutes, Austin straddled the stanchion of the north end zone’s goal posts. The crossbar and uprights were being toppled by jubilant fans.

Austin raised his fist and roared.

That’s when Knox News photographer Brianna Paciorka captured Austin’s unbridled elation in a photo that donned the front page of Sunday’s Knoxville News Sentinel.

It is an image that will enter Vols lore after one of the most memorable wins in program history.

The photo bears a resemblance to the image of fans straddling the goal post in a photo appearing on the News Sentinel’s front page in 1982, after Tennessee defeated Alabama in Bear Bryant’s final appearance at Neyland Stadium.

“It was just serene,” Austin said of his perch, “like a dream that I couldn’t even imagine coming true.”

[ Here's how to buy a copy of the News Sentinel's front page from Tennessee-Alabama game ]

‘That’s the photo’: How a Knox News photographer captured the shot of the night

Paciorka has been a Knox News photographer for six years, and she’s as good as they come at capturing scenes of jubilation or dejection.

Such photos of emotion are the type that page designers crave as front page art after a win like Tennessee’s on Saturday. They’re harder to capture when the photographer is amid a mess of reveling fans.

TOPPMEYER:Why Paul Finebaum sprang from a Tennessee Vols casket before Alabama football game | Toppmeyer

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FROM FIELD TO RIVER TO FRAT HOUSE:The fate of the Neyland Stadium goal posts after Tennessee football beat Alabama

While Austin prepared himself for a potential field-storming, Paciorka had a different thought: Don’t get trampled.

While working for the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 2014, Paciorka had been shooting on the field at Tiger Stadium when LSU upset No. 3 Ole Miss.

LSU fans rushed the field, and Paciorka got banged up while capturing the scene.

Her strategy Saturday was to stay clear of the student section in the end zone’s southeast corner, knowing that’s where the rowdiest fans may come from if the Vols won.

So, Paciorka positioned herself along Tennessee’s sideline, in the southwest corner. She wasn’t situated in a good spot to shoot McGrath’s kick, so she directed her attention toward Tennessee’s players, hoping to capture the Vols’ reaction.

Paciorka was among the first onto the field to start photographing the victory scene. Paciorka, though, stands 5-foot-3 – not an ideal height for snapping photos in a field storming. She started getting pinballed among the swarm of bodies and came away with some bumps and bruises.

“I was able to get a few photos of people lighting cigars, but I wasn’t getting any players,” Paciorka said. “I saw (coach Josh) Heupel, and I could see him with a cigar, but I couldn’t get over there. I saw Hendon Hooker but didn’t really get a good photo of him. I was kind of getting a little frustrated.”

Fans went for the south goal posts first. When Paciorka heard fans plotting to get the goal posts at the north end, she headed that direction.

She started to photograph a man trying to climb the goal posts, but her shots kept getting obstructed, or they were not focused the way she wanted. Fans holding cell phones aloft kept muddling her shot, or people’s hats or heads got in the way. In particular, one fan wearing a white cowboy hat kept obstructing her photos.

“If you could see the photos leading up to that A1 photo, it’s just lots of cellphones, lots of heads, lots of hats,” Paciorka said. “That guy in the leather jacket and white cowboy hat, I was just looking at those photos, and it’s like ... dude, why did you have to wear a white (cowboy) hat?"

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A shirtless fan wearing orange-and-white checkered overalls got a boost onto the stanchion.

Paciorka kept snapping, rapid-fire, using what photographers dub the “spray and pray” approach.

The shirtless fan raised his fist, as Paciorka held the shutter button down on her Nikon D5 fitted with a 24-70 millimeter lens.

“I was like, I’m going to frame it the best I can, try to get the focus correct as much as I can, and I’m just going to hold down the shutter, and I’m going to hope something comes out,” Paciorka said. “And something did.”

Then, the crowd surged. Paciorka felt her feet lift off the ground. She got bonked on the head with the goal post as fans carted it off.

Time to extricate herself.

She made her way to the media work room, where she began to evaluate her photos. It was then that she saw what she’d captured, her tack-sharp photo of Austin, fist raised.

Paciorka knew instantly: This was the shot.

Paciorka is an LSU graduate and a Tigers fan, but she’s learned Vols football history while working for Knox News. She knew a News Sentinel photo, decades earlier, had shown fans tearing down the goal posts after Tennessee upset Alabama.

The symmetry of the two photos, 40 years apart, was not lost on her.

“When I saw that, I was like, ‘That’s the photo,’” Paciorka said. “Of all the photos I’ve taken, that’s kind of a throwback to Tennessee football history. It was about then that I knew that it was probably a good photo.”

Paciorka’s photo was bound for the front page, or A1, as it is known to journalists.

Austin’s night was just beginning.

A dash onto the field. A trek to the river. Owning a piece of history.

Austin attended his first Tennessee game at age 2. His grandfather, Dr. Tony Long, took him.

Austin wore a Tennessee wristband from age 2 until eighth grade, when it finally became too stretched for continued wear, but his Vols fandom continued to take hold.

Austin’s great-grandmother, Evelyn Johnson, 92, helped put the family on the Big Orange track.

Johnson worked in UT’s admissions office for two and a half decades, and she had season tickets that remained in the family for more than 50 years until this season, when they became too pricy.

Still, Austin plans to attend three Vols games this season. The Alabama game was his second of the year.

Austin decided a few years ago that if Tennessee ever beat the Tide again, he’d rush the field. After the Vols trounced LSU on the road on Oct. 8, Austin believed UT’s streak of futility against Alabama may finally end.

Other members of Austin’s family were seated elsewhere in the stadium, but Austin and Ferguson had tickets in the cheap seats.

No matter.

They ditched their seats in favor of standing in the stadium’s lower bowl near the 50-yard line, up from Tennessee’s sideline.

Austin and Ferguson got separated during the field storming. A while after two fans helped boost Austin onto the stanchion, he received a call from Ferguson, who had departed the stadium – as part of the group that marched the other set of goal posts out of the stadium and onto the city streets.

Austin heard garbled clues from Ferguson like “16th” street, “goal post,” and “river.”

“I’m like, holy cow, my best friend is carrying the other goal post to the river with everyone else,” Austin said.

Austin took off in pursuit.

He ran here, ran there, but couldn’t find them. Finally, after a scavenger hunt that Austin said lasted at least a half hour, he located the posse and helped shoulder the load.

“We took it to the river, and we dunked it in,” said Austin, who had planned to attend Middle Tennessee State and study mechatronics engineering but is now reconsidering in favor of UT if he can make the financials work.

“We baptized it, as we say. We baptized the goal post.”

Oh, but you know this story doesn’t end there.

Austin, Ferguson and the rest of their party marched one of the uprights to the Sigma Chi fraternity house.

Out came the saws to cut the goal post into pieces and divvy it up to those who helped carry it on its journey.

Austin and Ferguson came away with a hearty piece of goal post that they would later cut in two to split between them. It was there, at the fraternity house, that Austin first caught sight of Paciorka’s photo that had started to make the rounds on the internet.

There he was, up on that orange perch, fist raised, absorbing a moment of Tennessee football history that Paciorka captured with a click of the shutter.

Blake Toppmeyer is an SEC Columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @btoppmeyer.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: How a Tennessee football photo for the ages was captured vs. Alabama