Caked in mud from head to toe and clinching a purple hat signifying Carroll College's NAIA national championship win, junior linebacker Brandon Day leaned back on his knees, turned upward to the sky and let out a roar.

Little did he know that during that celebration Saturday at Jim Carroll Stadium in Savannah, Tenn., a photographer with the Associated Press had captured his moment of utter elation with one frame left in his camera.

The photo snapped by John Russell, which features Day center frame and teammates Zach Richardson and Kyle Moore diving into the mud after their 17-9 win over the University of Sioux Falls, will grace the cover of Sports Illustrated for its annual "Pictures of the Year" edition this week.

"I was definitely screaming," Day said. "I basically just thanked God and thought about my two grandfathers (Howard Day and Dale Gullings) who had passed away in July and October.

"I knew they were looking down. It was just really a special moment for me."

One he was happy to be able to celebrate with his teammates and coaches, and now the rest of the world.

"That's what I'm most proud of, is that Carroll College got this kind of recognition in a national publication," he said. "It's amazing. From all the hard work and stuff we've done."

The Saints defeated Sioux Falls in the pouring rain to extend their reign as one of the most dominant programs in collegiate football history. They went 15-0 this season and captured their fifth title in six years after winning four in a row from 2002-05. They hold more national championships than any other active school in the NAIA.

For Day, a first team all-conference selection and national champion whose face now adorns one of the most respected publications in the world, the whirlwind moment has been simply unbelievable.

"First it was shock. I thought somebody was pulling my leg to be honest," he said. "It's a dream come true for every little kid. They always dream about being on the cover of Sports Illustrated."

Day said he even has doctored pictures from when he was a child playing football, the Sports Illustrated banner hanging across the top. While he probably won't throw those photos out, he has a real one to place in their stead.

"I'm pretty much on cloud nine right now," he said. But, "the work never stops, we're on to next year now."

Amazingly, the photo nearly didn't happen.

Russell, who ran from the sidelines to capture the image seconds after the title had been decided, had used up every one of the frames on his digital camera except one.

"I just turned around and happened to see the players taking head-first dives into the mud," he said. "I knew that it was a pretty good moment, and then realized that was the last frame I had on that memory card."

After he saw the photo of Day in his viewfinder, the photographer immediately began shuffling through the hundreds of images, deleting a few along the way.

Ten or 15 seconds later, and the moment was over. His photo, however, will last forever.

"I never dreamed it to be the cover," said the 39-year-old Russell, who also is a staff photographer at Vanderbilt University and based in Nashville. "I think Sports Illustrated is kind of like the Holy Grail of sports photography.

"There's not many people that can say they have had a photo on the cover of SI."

It was the fourth time Russell had shot the championship game, skipping last year. He happened to get the job as a stringer -- the term for a freelance journalist hired for a particular story -- by fellow photographer Mark Humphrey of the AP. Humphrey was unable to snap the photos on Saturday because it was the same day as his company Christmas party.

The next morning, when he had heard about Russell's photo, Humphrey congratulated him in an e-mail. He said that next year he would go to the game, and Russell could attend the Christmas party.

Whether Humphrey could capture a photo so true to the emotion of sports would be difficult to say. Prior to Russell's photo, Sports Illustrated had thousands of pictures from across the world to choose from before narrowing it down to one.

But it wasn't until they had seen Day kneeling on the turf, his blond hair stained gray by the earth and the word LOVE tattooed on his right upper arm, FAITH on the other -- both written in Old English -- that they felt they had a cover photo.

It was then that Terry McDonell, editor of the Sports Illustrated group, said it would bump off the Mitchell Report, a document naming more than 80 Major League baseball players thought to have taken performance-enhancing drugs, as the main piece for the front cover.

It is, McDonell said, the best photo of a selection that will spread across 36 pages in the magazine.

"It was the best photo I had that had the feeling and spirit of football in the United States. Of college football, especially," he said. "What it means to people, how people react to it. The emotion and the storytelling. It is emblematic of everything that is good about sports."

Reporter Jeff Windmueller:

447-4065 or jeff.windmueller

@helenair.com