Published Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:09 AM
Updated Wednesday, January 20, 2010 9:10 AM
After 29 years of living in the South, I will concede one thing about SEC football.
Y’all love your football and you live and die with your schools. There are no more passionate college football fans in the land than SEC fans.
Y’all are nuts.
Where else does a grown man cry over the passing of a mascot? In Athens, Georgia they did. ?Twice in the last two years when UGAs VI and VII passed on.
I’ll admit, I got a bit teary eyed when I heard of UGA VII’s passing, but when UGA VI bought the farm, I openly wept, and I’m not all that big of a Georgia Bulldog fan.
Y’all take the cake.
Where else do fans cheer when they see a young man cry?
The “Tim Tearbow Fan Page” on Facebook has enough fans there to start its own mid-sized city.
And nowhere do fans having nothing else to live for other than their SEC football than in Knoxville, Tennessee.
At first pass, we all want to jump on that bandwagon and say Tennessee Volunteer fans are insane, but seriously, you could substitute any SEC colors for the Big Orange and get the same reaction after what Vols coach Lane Kiffin did this week.
Granted, only SEC football fans found such great revelry in what Kiffin did to Big Orange fans when he jumped ship after just one year and admitted his favorite color wasn’t Volunteer Orange, but instead C-Note Green when Lane and Uncle Jed “loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly.”
Kiffin did the same thing former University of Cincinnati Bearcats’ football coach Brian Kelly did right before the New Year when Kelly took the Notre Dame head coaching job and left his Bearcats coachless a week before the Sugar Bowl.
Kiffin had an opportunity to head the preeminent football program west of the Mississippi in Southern Cal. They offered him a whole truckload of greenbacks and Kiffin took it.
So, why are UT fans all ticked off? If someone offers you three times what you’re making right now, would you take it? Sure you would.
Notre Dame offered Kelly almost eight times what he made at U.C. and you wonder why the fine people of Cincinnati were upset. The timing stunk, but not the decision.
But what’s funny in all this – or maybe not – is the reaction by Volunteer fans that Kiffin skipped town after just one season. These guys are beyond angry.
This strikes at the heart of your manhood. It’s like realizing Creamsicle orange is not a very intimidating color and does not invoke the proper amount of fear, Peyton Manning or no Peyton Manning.
These people rioted (funny).
They threatened Kiffin’s life (definitely not funny).
They burned Kiffin in effigy (to which I heard one disgruntled Vols’ fan cry out, “To heck with Effigy, let’s burn him right here in Knoxville!”).
The first thing I learned about football and the South when I moved here 29 years ago from Ohio and Indiana is that y’all are nuts about your SEC football, but nuts as y’all may be, nobody says nuts like Tennessee Volunteers fans.
Case in point, a You Tube video making the rounds online shows a very distraught U.T. fan removing all Lane Kiffin paraphernalia from his home and dumping it in a ceremonial but unceremonious pile outside his front door.
The angry and potty-mouthed fan then proceeds to relieve himself on his once favorite Lane Kiffin T-shirt, and after a few more poignant and well-placed comments, sets it all on fire.
You have to hand it to U.T. fans.
Gamecocks fans didn’t get this upset when Lou Holtz left.
U.T. fans though, they take the cake. They’re nuts.
And you know what they say about nuts; you can’t spell “Nuts” without UT.