Tennessee Titans: The Resounding Impact of the Loud and Proud "Ladies of Titans Twitter"
NASHVILLE, Tenn. ⏤ It was a warm September day when a mild disaster struck for Nashville real-estate agent Sherica Nichols: her glasses broke. As a diabetic with vision issues that significantly affected her ability to read, she desperately needed a replacement pair to function in her day-to-day life. But as a single mom without vision […]
NASHVILLE, Tenn. ⏤ It was a warm September day when a mild disaster struck for Nashville real-estate agent Sherica Nichols: her glasses broke.
As a diabetic with vision issues that significantly affected her ability to read, she desperately needed a replacement pair to function in her day-to-day life.
But as a single mom without vision insurance to cover that replacement, she couldn’t afford to simply walk into a store and buy a brand-new pair.
Nichols asked various friends and family members if they had any old frames they could spare. No luck.
She asked those friends and family members if they knew of anyone who had an old set of frames to offer. No luck there, either.
Nichols relented. Defeated, she began counting the overwhelming cost of buying a new pair.
Luckily, Nichols didn’t have to do that. She never made that purchase.
Instead, the Ladies of Titans Twitter stepped in.
LOTT, a group founded and maintained completely by Tennessee Titans fans, allows women who root for the team to connect, build relationships and discuss their favorite team.
Nichols, a huge Titans fan, jumped at the opportunity to join the group when it launched in 2020. One year later, her fellow members secretly took up a collection to fund her glasses.
“The group, in a matter of minutes, all came together to help me get a new pair,” Nichols said. “I’m so thankful for them.”
Nichols' story is a prime example of how LOTT operates.
What began as a simple Twitter direct message group chat in 2020 has become a thriving community, an overwhelming source of support for its members and even a resource for the Titans organization.
“I CONSIDER IT LIKE SWITZERLAND”
Stephani Perkins, a Titans super fan from Tullahoma, Tennessee, created the LOTT group chat on a whim ahead of the 2020 NFL season.
She wanted the group to serve as a safe place for women to talk about the Titans and football in general, universes heavily dominated by men.
“It’s just completely, for lack of a better word, a sausage fest,” Perkins said. “I just felt like we didn’t have a place for us to go and talk about whatever we wanted to without being questioned about our knowledge, without being talked at instead of talked to.”
Perkins posted a Tweet announcing her new group and inviting any interested women to join, worrying that her vision was simply a pipe dream no one else would care about.
She was wrong.
Just over 18 months into LOTT’s existence, it functions exactly as Perkins hoped it would, though the group’s conversations do sometimes go beyond football.
“I consider it like Switzerland,” said Donna Haynes, a member of LOTT. “It’s kind of this nice neutral area where you can go to have your thoughts about whatever, if it’s life for the day, or if it’s football. And I think a lot of friendships have been formed because of it, as well.”
That’s what truly makes LOTT special—the feeling of community it provides to its 75-and-counting members.
Women who join LOTT don’t just get a group of pals to talk ball with—they get a family, something Perkins never saw coming in her wildest dreams.
“I had no idea that I was creating some form of history,” Perkins said. “Now, I’m seeing where people have little girls of their own and they’re like, ‘I hope she’s a future LOTT.’ There was one person who posted their newborn baby girl, and they’re like, ‘Look at the newest member of the LOTT group.’ It got to me.”
“A BIG STARSTRUCK ROLLERCOASTER”
LOTT’s impact extends beyond its members, though. The entire Titans fan base got to see the group and its passion in action during the 2021 season.
Ahead of the season, the Titans’ marketing team sought more ways to highlight and support the women in their fanbase.
Gil Beverly, the Titans’ senior vice president and chief marketing officer, knew exactly where to go for the best information on that front: the members of LOTT.
“Gil was like, ‘hey, we’d love to have a conversation and figure out how we can grow this more,’” said Carrie Romero, a member of LOTT.
Beverly and the Titans’ brass knew of LOTT because of the group’s large social media footprint and began offering their support even before 2021.
“They kind of burst on the scene during the fall of last season,” Beverly said. "What we did is, seeing that as a positive development, we’ve lent them help and assistance where we could. We’ve helped them develop hype reels and videos, we’ve had events where they’ve been front and center, we’ve featured them on the jumbotron and in content.
"But ultimately, they’re responsible for developing this community.”
When Beverly and the Titans approached LOTT for advice on how to celebrate their female fans, Perkins and the other members brought up the idea of dedicating a home game on the 2021 schedule as a “women’s appreciation game.”
The Titans loved it.
Over the ensuing weeks and months, Beverly and company continued to meet with LOTT members as they developed the idea.
Each of those Zoom calls, Perkins said, was a “pinch-me” moment.
“I was just like ‘holy crap,’ we actually get to talk to executives and people who run the organization,” Perkins said. “All of it was a big starstruck rollercoaster for me.”
The Titans decided to make their Week Seven game against the Kansas City Chiefs the women’s appreciation game, and they wanted to involve women in all their gameday festivities.
They tapped Danielle Bradberry, winner of the fourth season of “The Voice,” to sing the national anthem and perform at halftime.
They made Olympic gold-medalist Shawn Johnson the game’s Honorary 12th Titan.
They even asked Romero, a voiceover artist and podcast host by trade, to announce the Titans’ starting lineup over the loudspeaker, making her the first woman to ever perform that task for an NFL game.
“I was outside of my skin,” Romero said.
Before the game, the Titans threw a tailgate party outside of Nissan Stadium for LOTT members, and a special visitor stopped by: Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk.
“We had been kidding with Gil Beverly for a long time that Amy is our queen and that we wanted to meet her,” Haynes said. “We all went bananas, me included. I’m 51, and I think I felt like a 15-year-old girl.”
Strunk, well aware of LOTT and its impact, had a special message for the group’s founder.
“She came up to me, and she was like, ‘Stephani, you did this. You created this. I’m so proud of you,’” Perkins said.
“AN OUTSTANDING REPRESENTATIVE”
These days, Perkins is practically a celebrity in the Titans’ world.
The team named her its 2021 Fan of the Year, an honor that comes with an all-expenses-paid trip to Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles—a value of well over $10,000—and the chance to announce one of Tennessee’s picks at the 2022 NFL Draft in Las Vegas.
“We just knew she’d be an outstanding representative of the Titans and Nashville, Tennessee,” Beverly said.
The Titans also chose Perkins as the Honorary 12th Titan for their home regular-season finale. When she walked onto the field before the game, she received a hero’s welcome.
Head coach Mike Vrabel addressed her by name and shook her hand. All-Pro safety Kevin Byard walked up and asked her for a picture.
Though Perkins deflects the credit and attention to her fellow LOTT members at every opportunity, she deserves plenty of both.
She created something that brings joy and love—in addition to the occasional new pair of glasses—to many women.
“It’s a beautiful thing to have that come from football,” Romero said. "The fact that we are the female fan base, which usually is looked down upon, there’s a lot to overcome there. But the glass ceilings are being broken all across the league.”
Cover image: Donald Page/Tennessee Titans
