LARGETONY Blog

There are certain match-ups in college football that year-after-year are considered some of the biggest games in the sport. Usually it involves a long-standing rivalry between two storied or highly respected programs. These are the games that are getting national attention. I’m talking games where emotions run high, it seems that everything is at stake, and players, coaches, and fans alike put everything on the line. I’m talking Michigan vs. Ohio State. Texas vs. Oklahoma. Miami vs. Florida State. I’m talking Tennessee vs. Florida.

Last Saturday was the Tennessee-Florida game. True to form, it had all the makings of THE BIG GAME. The teams were bitter rivals, they were each other’s primary obstacle toward their conference championship, both have two of the largest fan bases in the country. Both were among the top 10 in national rankings. One team was rolling out a highly touted new coah (Florida) and the other was going for the third consectutive win (Tennessee) against the other on the others home field. The last three times these teams met, there was only a 2 point difference in the final score. Was there a greater fucking recipe for an emotional gut-wrenching game? I had my Tums ready.

But I never even cracked the foil on the wrapper. There was no knotted stomach. No pacing with anxiety. No half-peeking/half sheilding my eyes as a key play rolls into motion. No burying myself under the sheet and curling into a ball. I had hoped to get together with a buddy to teach him to appreciate and enjoy football by watching the game together. After all, this was so big that CBS was airing it nationally in prime time. True “must see TV.” Now I’m glad we didn’t hook up. He would have simply wondered what all the fuss was about.

What was all the fuss about? Where was the great football game? Where was the great team that Tennessee was predicted to have this year? The one that opened the season ranked #3 in the nation and was still ranked at #4 going into that game? Okay, Tennessee lost 16-7. But that wasn’t what made it not a great game. There have been plenty of times that Tennessee lost to Florida (all those horrible Spurrier years in the ’90s) but still played exciting thrilling games. This was one of the dullest games I ever watched. Tennessee was just never really in the game.

Win or lose, what makes football so wonderful is what they call “the big plays.” Those are the moments when a player, through sheer grit, passion, tenacity, drive (and probably some level of luck), comes through with, or forces some game-changing play. And when a game is really good, the momentum swings back and forth favoring one team then the other. There’s nothing like those “it’s not over until the clock runs out” sort of games. Even the Vols’ goof-ups (of which there were plenty…and stupid ones, at that) were not because they were trying to “make it happen.”

And that is the problem with the Vols this year. No grit. No passion. No drive. I could deal with the loss if they had at least played like they wanted to win. Like they would do anything necessary to win. If they did that and still came up short, then that’s the breaks. Can’t win ‘em all. But I gotta say, just like I would to a boyfriend or date,”If you’re gonna go down, you better give it some effort.”

At the rate they are going, they may not win very many. Take for example the game coming up this week against LSU (a team far superior to Florida). This is the one game that I figured we probably could not win this season. Now, I’m pretty sure of it. And it’s going to be worse that I proabably imagined because unless the Vols start playing with some fire, I’m afraid they’re playing with fire and are going to get seriously burned.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 20th, 2005 at 2:24 am 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.