LARGETONY Blog

When I was a kid, my mother used to always say that my brother is a “Thinker” and that I am a”Feeler.” By that, she meant that my brother could separate his emotions from sitiuations and that I tended to operate from the heart. And, I guess she was right. I remember once seeing a dog get hit by a car, and it just tore me up. Not even a dog I knew, let alone a dog of my own. Only my mother recognized this in me, because my father instilled in me early on that men do not wear their hearts on their sleeves. To this day, I won’t let someone see me cry (telling you about is one thing, letting you see it is entirely another). Also, to this day, running over a possum (which happens more than you could ever imagine) makes my heart sink.

Yep. I’m a feeler. So much so that I often take the stress and stuggle of someone else’s situation upon myself. And because of that fact, as much as I love football, I just don’t have the stomach for it. I just get too involved and make myslef sick.

The Tennessee Vols season opening game ended about and hour ago. First game down, ten to go. And even though the Vols won (beat University of Alabama-Birmingham 17-10), I still feel like I need a Pepto-Bismol. And that was just from the TV and radio broadcasts. I didn’t actually go to the game. Good thing. Combine the heat of East Tennessee on a summer afternoon with my emotional queasiness, and I proabably would have vomited on someone.

Things started off well depsite UAB holdingthe Vols to just a field goal in their first possession. One play later, the Vols recovered a UAB fumble and gained possession back and set a scoring drive. In the first 5 minutes of the game, Tennessee was ahead 10-0. Then the Vols started shooting themselves in the foot: there was an interception by UAB, a missed field goal, and countless dropped passes by receivers over the first two quarters..each goof making my stomach innards twist up. But, even so, by halftime, Tennessee was ahead 17-3.

Neither team scored in the third quarter, but UAB came awful close after a drive that lasted about five minutes down to the 3-yard line, when Tennessee finally stopped them. THAT was hard to watch. There is no way an unranked team should be able to control the clock for that long against a team ranked #3 in the nation. Tennessee followed up with a nice long drive (that took us into the 4th quarter) of their own for about five minutes that ended with another interception by UAB rather than a score. It doesn’t feel as good when your team gets stopped after a long possession as it does when your teams stops the other after their long possession. And it makes your stomach hurt even more (mine anyway).

When UAB topped off the interception with and even longer possesssion of almost seven minutes and a touchdown, it was all I could bear to see. The score was now 17-10 (a one score difference: touchdown and extra point) and I head to to turn off the TV and just listen to the radio to see if Tennessee could score, or at least hold UAB off for the final 8 minutes of the game. Tennessee had the ball needed to eat up the clock so that UAB would have little chance of scoring again (which would make the game go into overtime. Overtime is nothing but 150% pure stress. If that happened, I would break into hives).

I’m laying on the bed, practially in the fetal position (partially cause I’m stressed, partically cause I’m tall) and 20 seconds later (by the play clock) a THIRD interception by UAB. Holy cow! They have possession again, already in our territory, no less, with seven and a half minutes to play. Plenty of time to score. But I remained calm. Yes, I did. I calmly pulled the sheet over my head.

I listened as UAB burned another 4 minutes of the clock and were within 12 yards of scoring. One quick pass and we would be headed for overtime, for sure. But Tennessee’s defense managed to put enough pressure on UAB’s quarterback (who thay have had trouble with all day) and he threw an incomplete pass on the the 4th down.

So, three and a half minutes left. Tennessee has to hold on to their 7 point lead and burn up enough so that UAB does not have time to score again. The Vols struggle a bit…getting a penalty and not much yardage. They get down to that last two minutes. The most critical time of a close game. It is often when the game is determined. If the team ahead has the ball at that point, then they have to make sure they do nothing to fuck up. Oh, the pressure! Oh, my stomach!

The Vols have possession at the TN 15 yard line (i.e., 85 yrds from scoring) on third down. They have to get 7 yards to get the first down and maintain possession. It’s do or die. Quarterback Rick Clausen pulls through and comes up with a pass to C.J. Fayton for 54 yrds!!!! Yes, folks, little Timmy has been pulled out of the well. I don’t know how long I had been holding my breath, but I let out the biggest sigh of relief. The game was all but over. Tennessee gained 15 more yards on the next play, and was in scoring position. But the coaches smartly chose to not play with fire and basically let the clock run out on the next couple plays instead of being greedy for a few more points. At this point, a win is a win.

I think this game got to me because I was not prepared for it to be such a struggle. This was supposed to be a fairly easy game for Tennessee, and it wasn’t. They played alright, butthey didn’t play like a top 5 team. Had this been the LSU game….we’d have been dead. Let’s hope that the Vols can make better use of their talent (which they have plenty of) when LSU happens at the end of the month. In the mean time, I would suggest you see your broker and stock up on shares of Tums. I got a feeling their sales are gonna jump.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 3rd, 2005 at 4:47 pm and is filed under football. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.