Merry Christmas.

Final thoughts from my seats in Columbus. It wasn’t as cold in Ohio as it was back in God’s country. My seats were superb, the Buckeye fans in my club section were top shelf, polite, and unerringly compassionate. The porta-potties in the stadium concourses were a little weird. There were a lot of those snuggle-late-winter night big girls donned in scarlet and grey on display. Ohio State fans do not like Kirk Herbstreit, Ryan Day, or Jack Sawyer. Kirk is a demon, Day coaches too tight and Sawyer is a “spoiled brat”.

The Tennessee offense is like watching a great dancer, well past his prime, marking his ineradicable elegance in a few moves he can neither develop nor sustain. This is most keenly felt in the second half, when the offensive coordinators command of his subject slips and the the game rushed to its hackneyed conclusion.

A quick wiki on Tennessee history:

The beatdowns the Tennessee Volunteers (Vols) faced from Ohio State in college football and the Mexican army at the Alamo and San Jacinto share some striking similarities:

Both the Vols and the Texian forces were caught off guard by numerically superior opponents but less skillful foes. The Vols’ loss to Ohio State was a blowout where they were overpowered and underprepared against a underdog team. Similarly, Santa Anna’s forces, despite their valiant defense, overwhelmed the Tennessee Volunteers at the Alamo.

Later on at San Jacinto, the Tennesseans, despite being demoralized after the Alamo, rallied hard and launched a surprise attack on an overconfident and a bloated Mexican army, winning decisively in just 18 minutes. For the Vols, they have not had a that direct “revenge” game, but like the lads at San Jacinto, history says they’ve managed to recover from tough losses in subsequent seasons.

Case in point, The 1997 Orange Bowl saw the Tennessee Volunteers facing the Nebraska Cornhuskers in a highly anticipated matchup that effectively decided the National Championship, Nebraska winning 42-17, thanks to a dominant running game and a defense that stifled Tennessee’s offensive efforts.

The following season, Tennessee bounced back strong, finishing with a 13-0 record and winning the 1998 BCS National Championship by defeating hapless Florida State in the Fiesta Bowl.