GrundyVol — Coalmont, TN: “You don’t like Tennessee football very much, do you?”
He was talking to Matt4RockyTop.
That was the accusation.
Not that Matt was wrong. Not that he was being an asshole. Not even that he’d spent another morning trying to kick Old Coach U’s folding chair out from underneath him. He didn’t like Tennessee football enough.
Matt’s offense was questioning a retired military man living outside Tellico who had apparently spent more time studying Kennesaw State than most people employed to cover Kennesaw State football.
Old Coach had posted his weekly breakdown of the ballgame. Not “Vols by 40.” Not “play the freshmen by halftime.” A breakdown: personnel, tendencies, matchups, schemes, what Kennesaw does well, where Tennessee can hurt them, where Kennesaw can hurt Tennessee, and what Tennessee better not fuck around with while everybody else is already making College GameDay signs for Texas.
Exit81 read the whole thing and finally asked the obvious:
“Jesus Christ, Old Coach. It’s Kennesaw State, not the Fulda Gap.”
For you slack-jawed civilians, the Fulda Gap was where NATO spent the Cold War waiting for Soviet armor to come pouring into West Germany.
Maybe Kennesaw State brings a somewhat different level of firepower to Knoxville?
Old Coach continued anyway.
Somewhere outside Tellico, where the river comes crashing down out of the Cherokee National Forest, an old retired military guy had spent part of his week studying the Kennesaw State Owls. This is also a man who says he coached football.
At some point Old Coach’s résumé wandered close enough to Mack Brown that Matt4RockyTop and Karl82 started asking questions. Did he coach with Mack Brown? Work around Mack Brown? Know somebody who coached with Mack Brown? Was Mack Brown simply in the same ZIP code?
Nobody has satisfactorily reconciled this claim. Old Coach hasn’t withdrawn anything.
And Thursday, nobody particularly cared, because the Board fucking loved his report.
RockyTopRon: “Good breakdown Coach. Appreciate you doing these.”
Fine.
Then BookOfFulmer316 turned appreciation into a church service:
“Another great one Coach. Preparation precedes victory. General Neyland understood it and obviously you do too.”
Oh, God.
Old Coach U had been thanked and canonized before lunch.
That’s about when Matt4RockyTop started kicking furniture, and somewhere over in Coalmont a Grundy County man decided Matt’s real problem wasn’t Old Coach. It was Tennessee.
“You don’t like Tennessee football very much, do you?”
There it was. Matt had questioned Old Coach’s football résumé and somehow ended up having his own Tennessee citizenship reviewed by a man in Grundy County. This is how the Board settles disagreements.
Then TriCitiesVol77, a regional concrete-admixture salesman from Kingsport who considers himself the Board’s voice of reason, wandered in to restore order. That generally means order is about to get worse.
He agreed with Old Coach that Tennessee couldn’t afford to overlook anybody. Reasonable. Then somebody mentioned Texas, and just like that the Kennesaw thread started trying to become a Texas thread.
Matt4RockyTop: “Jesus Christ.”
Matt was now fighting on two fronts: Old Coach’s résumé and a Board that couldn’t remain on the correct opponent for ten consecutive minutes.
Then JasonVols22 appeared carrying what looked like a question:
“Thnaks Coach. Qustion do you beleive we beat Kennsaw? I think we do but you never no if we look ahead. Always apreciate your insite!”
Jason is a genuinely nice man. That has never been the problem. The problem is every sentence he writes appears to have suffered a moderate bird strike on final approach.
Matt4RockyTop: “What the fuck is an insite?”
JasonVols22: “You new what I ment.”
Of course we did. Eventually.
Old Coach answered him anyway. Because underneath the cutoff Adidas shirt, the trailer, the Swisher Sweets and the increasingly difficult-to-verify branch of the Mack Brown coaching tree, the old bastard actually had a point.
Everybody else has moved on. Peyton is talking about Texas. The Board is talking about Texas. Fans are making GameDay plans for Texas.
Old Coach U is sitting outside Tellico worrying about Kennesaw State.
Maybe that’s the coach in him. Maybe that’s the retiree in him. Maybe once you’ve spent an entire Tuesday figuring out why TRICARE rejected a $14 claim, four hours of Kennesaw film doesn’t seem unreasonable.
Either way, Tennessee has been warned. Old Coach did the work. Jason injured the English language. Matt4RockyTop spent the morning fighting everybody in sight.
And somewhere over in Grundy County, GrundyVol is still wondering whether Matt likes Tennessee football at all.
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