It's On: Tennessee Volunteers
By Paul Jordan
Yup….Sometimes the jokes write themselves
The bye week is over, and the reckoning is on the horizon. Several polls in the least week have shown that a majority of UK fans would take a Tennessee win and a bowl loss, and I count myself among those desperate fans. I have gone nearly my whole life (as some of you have) without a win against the big orange eyesore to the south, and I have gone half the decade watching and attending bowl games. Forgive my newfound boredom with postseason Tennessee bowl trips, but give me a newfound excitement for in-season Tennessee conference trips.
My hard work and dedication to victory with large amounts of screaming, cheering, and drinking is nothing compared to what the football players do. 6 A.M. workouts, 7 A.M. conditioning sessions, classes, then practices every day for a vast majority of the year make for a tough life (but hey, I’d take that for a free college education and all the groupies I could ask for); but to see your hopes slip away in such a glorious fashion as the ways we’ve created has to be horrible. Seniors like Ricky Lumpkin (Clarksville, TN) and J.J. Helton (Franklin, TN) have experienced this pain for 5 years, and being a season ticket holder for the first few of their careers, I can tell you the recent ones had to have stung the most. Junior Randall Cobb, despite being used rarely in his career here, has to feel the hatred of this streak coming from the shadow of Neyland Stadium. Imagine how our own man-god feels whenever he goes home after another season of slaying the barbarian hordes of SEC defenses, just to hear,” Boy howdy Randall, too bad ya’ll cain’t seem ta figer out them Volunteers. Also, can you call the police? A guy in an orange track suit seems to have stabbed and robbed me.”
We can change this though. This year the Vols are sitting below us in the conference and in danger of breaking a bowl streak that extends back to 1989. How nice would it be if we could end that while strengthening our bowl prospects? I’m sure Tyler Robinson (Friendsville, TN/Alcoa High School) could tell you a thing or two about the importance of football accomplishments, with the former Tornado (movement to rename Alcoa’s mascot to the Fightin’ Randall Cobbs starts now) having been a part of a 6 consecutive state championship streak. The fact that we are pulling players like this out of Tennessee’s backyard means that we are winning the territory war and that, along with other schools drawing talent away from the area, means that the beast is getting weaker. But the streak still exists; we need to break its hold. Do you think Martavius Neloms (Memphis, TN) and Patrick Ligon (Germantown, TN) hears about the streak on the other side of the state? Probably. And I bet they’re already sick of it. As we all are. So before I really get worked up on all the reasons to beat/hate/litigate the Tennessee Volunteers (saving it for later this week in my yearly favorite post of the season), I’ll leave you to think about the kind of flak that Avery Williamson (Milan, TN) and Collins Ukwu (La Vergne, TN) can avoid if we just get one win. God, I hope we get this one.
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