A Fop Amongst Football Fans

In Knoxville Tennessee, the love of University of Tennessee football approaches near-religious fervor. "Go Big Orange" is intoned with the intensity of "Give us Barrabas" which a similar mob chanted back in antiquity. Car dealers peddle orange and white automobiles, including Winebagos, the riverside has special rental docks for people to bring their cabin cruisers to games, and one store specializes in selling Orange and White coffins. On game days, nine out of ten vehicles careening down the street are plastered with orange-and-white UT logos while flapping orange-and-white streamers in the wind like the tassels of some color-clueless stripper. Vol Fever is both epidemic and expected of Tennesseans.

I confess here I have never once attended a UT game. I've never worn Orange-and White. My indifference borders on ignorance. In my home town of Knoxville, this indifference separated me from the majority of my fellow man. When I was bold enough to express my indifference, the most common reaction was shock, followed by the question "Where are you from?" When I answered I was a born and inbred Knoxvillian, I was usually met with skepticism. No TRUE Knoxvillian could remain aloof from the allure of Vol Fever. I must be a clandestine Clemson or Florida agent sent in to disrupt the harmonious clan. I was not Of the Body. I was Alien. By not buying wholeheartedly into Vol fever and "supporting my team," I was supporting The Enemy.

The truth was, I wasn't supporting anyone. I truly didn't care about sports. I still don't. As an opera-loving, literature-devouring, sports-indifferent fop, I could care less about the Vols, the tribulations of their coaches, the monosyllabic mumblings of their quarterback, and the close runner-up in Vol Fever, the Lady Vols and their scary mannish Coach. This indifference almost endangered my very life on more than one occasion. I'm serious. In the eyes of the most extreme Vols fan, I was worse than a traitor, I was supporting "the enemy"--which was usually embodied in Clemson or worse, Florida. You see, the Civil War mentality easily transferred to College football. The South did indeed rise again, Not in Confederate Gray this time but in garish Orange-and White.

These New Rebels take this stuff seriously, and none more than those whom could never have passed the academic requirements to even go to the University to begin with. I mean the pickup truck driving, gunrack-toting "Go Vols" bellowing, whiskey drinking wife-beating thin-skinned hot-tempered East Tennessean I hope stays within the borders of Knoxville, or at least never ventures any further north than Lexington KY.

One thing though--I did net a hefty profit from my activities card each semester when I was a UT student by selling it to a friend of mine so he could purchase football tickets at a discount.

So I moved to Indiana thinking I got away from it all, and here all they talk about it Bobby Knight. Alas. But at least there isn't a death penalty for not caring about it.