Volken: “If Peyton picks Texas, fuck him. Paint over his name in Neyland and let Arch take care of him when he gets old.”
Nobody has actually said that.
Yet. It is coming though.
But Volken is already halfway there. Give this Board Peyton Manning, a microphone, his nephew playing quarterback for Texas and one stupid celebrity-picking segment on College GameDay, and somebody will get there before the first commercial break.
Eventually Rece Davis is going to turn toward Peyton and ask the only question that matters: Who wins—Texas or Tennessee? Not who does Peyton hope plays well. Not whether he loves Arch. Not whether family is important. Pick the winner. Texas or Tennessee.
And if Peyton Manning picks Texas, the Board is going to lose its ever-living minds. There will be betrayal threads before ESPN gets to commercial. Somebody will decide Peyton has always been more NFL than VFL. Somebody will suddenly remember Tee Martin won the national championship. Somebody will point out Peyton never beat Florida, and by the third page we’ll be breaking down the 1997 Florida game again like it happened last Saturday. Twenty-nine years of Peyton Manning being Peyton Manning will be reconsidered before lunch.
And Peyton had already added gas to the fire.
Peyton Manning, asked who he would pull for when Arch Manning and Texas play Tennessee
When it came to pulling for Arch to play well against Tennessee, Peyton called it “pretty much a no-brainer.” Perfectly reasonable. Wrong Board.
Volken has already announced, “Just realized that I am better than Peyton Manning.” For once, he brought evidence. Volken is a Texas alumnus who grew up in Tennessee, and he wants the Vols to “beat the breaks off” Texas.
His spelling. Not ours. A Texas diploma apparently doesn’t cover brakes.
His point, however, is clear enough: Volken went to Texas and still wants Tennessee to kick its ass. Peyton can surely survive rooting against his nephew for four quarters.
Then Hopes03 raised the stakes. His brother went to Alabama and his father didn’t speak to him for twenty years. Volken came back with his own act of devotion: he matched with an attractive woman on a dating app, discovered she was an Alabama fan and unmatched her.
Hopes03’s response: “In another word she’s a cu*t!”
There you go. One man lost a brother. Another threw an attractive woman back into the dating pool. Volken has a Texas diploma he apparently considers decorative. Arch being Peyton’s nephew isn’t impressing these people.
There was only one problem with any of this: Tennessee doesn’t play Texas Saturday.
While everybody was worrying about what Peyton might do next week, TennVols82 looked at the schedule:
“Some of yall over looking Kennesaw.”
He got laughing reactions. Of course he did. Nobody likes the newb who interrupts a perfectly good argument about next week’s game by bringing up this week’s game.
Normally that wouldn’t matter. The Board can overlook Kennesaw from the couch, at work or standing in line at Costco. Nobody posting there has to tackle anybody Saturday.
Except OldBullsGapVol has spent nearly two decades telling everybody the UT athletic department watches this Board. He knows people inside the administration. People talk. Threads get noticed. Ideas travel. Somewhere between a 47-post argument about the offensive line and somebody demanding a freshman get more snaps, the Tennessee football program apparently gets its guidance from this Board.
So the Board looking ahead isn’t harmless anymore. It’s malfeasance.
Not the Owls. Not their offense. Not some busted coverage or three turnovers. It could be our always-shitty offensive-line play. We can’t completely rule that out. But otherwise, the culprit is obvious: the Board may have looked ahead to Texas so aggressively that the coaching staff somehow caught it.
Like a virus.
The Board stopped preparing for Kennesaw. The coaches read the Board. Now the coaches have stopped preparing for Kennesaw. This is how you lose to Kennesaw.
And imagine if they actually do.
Kennesaw State 27. Tennessee 24. Neyland goes quiet. Heupel walks off wondering how his football team overlooked an opponent while the people responsible for maintaining the program’s strategic focus spent Thursday determining whether Peyton Manning should be disowned for a pick he hasn’t even made yet.
Then ESPN gets the highlight. Chris Fowler sees the score first and starts laughing. Kirk Herbstreit looks over, sees it and loses it too. Fowler tries to read the highlight while Herbstreit is throwing elbows into him. Fowler throws one back. Neither can get through it.
Finally Fowler gets enough air. “Tennessee,” he manages, “apparently had Texas next week.” Herbstreit folds over again.
And back on the Board, the investigation begins immediately. FIRE ELARBEE. HEUPEL HAD THEM UNPREPARED. NO LEADERSHIP. THIS TEAM WAS LOOKING AHEAD. That last thread will run six pages.
OldBullsGapVol will know somebody who knows somebody inside the athletic department who is furious. Three assistant coaches will be fired by posters before midnight. Somebody will blame NIL. Somebody will demand accountability.
There will be no investigation of the Board. The Board will conduct the investigation.
And absolutely nobody will return to the post where TennVols82 tried to warn them: “Some of yall over looking Kennesaw.”
He tried. They laughed. The Board looked ahead. The coaches followed. Tennessee lost. Then the same people responsible logged back in and demanded to know how Tennessee could possibly overlook Kennesaw State.
They counted their chickens. Then the fucking chickens showed up on ESPN and started crowing.
Leave a Reply