Hard lesson learned

[fredtoast]

At first this may seem like a "Other Sports" topic, but it is actually broader than that.

My favorite college football team is the University of Tennessee.  I was born and raised a Buckeye.  The first "Jersey" (actually just an XXL T-shirt) was a scarlet and Grey #45.  But I moved away from Ohio in 1981 and while living in east Tennessee and attending UT I became a Vols fan.  

For those of you too young to remember UT used to have a very good football program.  In the twenty seasons from 1985 to 2004 the Vols finished in the top 15 fifteen times, top 10 nine times, and top 5 five times including the undefeated National Champions of '98.

But things have gone very bad.  The Vols have only had 4 winning seasons in the last 11 years.  Last year they lost 8 games for the first time in the 114 year history of UT football.  Going into Saturday the had lost 11 straight SEC games over 3 seasons, and they were playing #21 Auburn on the road.

As the wheels have fallen off over the last couple of years I have stopped watching all of the Vols games.  If they are playing a ranked SEC team I just write it off as a loss.  And so I missed an epic 30-24 upset.

I think I live an interesting life, and do lots of different things I enjoy.  But as far as sheer emotional peaks I have to say that almost nothing matches live sporting events involving my favorite teams.  The only other thing better is watching my children perform in band or recitals, but those don't happen very often.  

So from now on I am going to try harder to either record or check in live at halftime of every Vol game.  My weekends are busy and it is hard to make time to watch games on both Saturday and Sunday, but life is too short to miss that adrenaline rush of watching your team win a big game.

[*michaelsean*]

I don't really pay attention to college football except to watch OSU and maybe some other big games, and I always wonder what happens to great programs. Tennessee was always good, and how about Nebraska? I imagine it all comes down to the coach and his ability to recruit. If you miss badly with a coach it may be hard to recover from as your reputation dies.

I've experienced a few of those amazing wins, but you have to go through a lot of pain in between them.

I was at the game when the Bengals beating the Steelers when we had Neil O'donnell. Maybe a minute left, 4th and 20 or something back on our own 20 and Pickens gets a first down, then the fake kneel down TD.

I was at the KC/Chad guarantee game in I think 2004.

I was there when the Bengals came back from a 16-0 halftime deficit against the Steelers. I think that was the one Rackers missed the XP to win, but kicked the game winner in OT.