LWS NOTE: The board handles below are real. The thread is real. The quotes are real and reproduced from the actual discussion. Nothing inside quotation marks was invented for this post. We do not need to make these people up.

Tennessee had a perfectly good troll.

Board member John Dyslin suggested putting the old interlocking UT at midfield for the Texas game. Not permanently. Not as part of a branding initiative. Just paint the damn thing there, let Texas see it during warmups and spend three hours being irritated.

He even mixed in the classics of Davy Crockett, Sam Houston and the old “University of Northern Mexico” line.

Petty. Historical. Juvenile. Exactly what college football shit-talk requires.

Then the board did what the board does whenever somebody accidentally has a good joke.

It formed a committee.

The_Real_Power_T wanted to know whether this might be a trademark issue. SupernautVol arrived with documentation.

“It is shared actually, and permission to use breaks down by geographical area.”

Six posts. That is how long these motherfuckers made it before a football prank became continuing legal education.

John Dyslin corrected the correction:

“Not a license issue. Both schools agreed to allow one another’s use.”

By midnight they were conducting discovery.

This is what happens when nerds try to be funny and cool. They cannot simply irritate Texas. They have to make certain the trolling is historically accurate, geographically permissible and legally supportable.

Then PC Was Here saw the “University of Northern Mexico” joke and decided the thread needed peer review. Technically, he explained, the region was already called Texas.

Thank God somebody stopped the Tennessee-Texas shit-posting long enough to protect the integrity of nineteenth-century territorial nomenclature.

Meanwhile, a few people actually understood the troll. (Frankly, we were lost too)

Hard Data:

“If it triggers Texans, then I’m all for it!”

And Volmol:

“It’s not insecurity. It’s pettiness cause it will piss Texas off… As the mayor of Pettyville I’m all for it.”

There. That is trolling. No footnotes. No licensing history. No jurisdiction map.

Make the other fan base mad and enjoy your Saturday.

Then ChattaVol08 asked ChatGPT to make a mockup of Neyland with the interlocking UT at midfield.

The computer put 12 defenders on the field.

RobertAyersOnTheSideOfCaution caught it immediately:

“Defense has 12 men on the field. Free play.”

The fake football game had better situational awareness than half the board.

The board kept going anyway. Power T aesthetics. Texas insecurity. Trademark geography. Historical usage. Somewhere in there Voldrew offered another completely serviceable solution:

“Just put 1794 on the field, end of thread.”

Also fine.

Unfortunately, the thread was now full of people trying to prove they were clever enough to troll Texas. No workable joke was getting out alive.

The original idea was good before everybody started explaining how smart it was.

Paint the interlocking UT. Irritate Texas. Play football.

If Tennessee wins, nobody in Austin is going to give a shit about the geographic terms of a 40-year-old logo agreement.

If Tennessee loses, Tennessee fans explaining those terms afterward will look like the biggest collection of fucking nerds in the SEC.

Paint the T.

Then shut up about the paperwork.

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