“We’re fucked.”
BlueCollarVol, the best plumber in Kimball, Tennessee, opened the VolNation thread with that. No greeting. No explanation. Just a professional assessment.
ESPN has Tennessee and Kentucky kicking off Saturday at 6:15 p.m. Not six. Not six-thirty. Six-fifteen. WVLT went looking and found the last college game that started at that exact time: Georgia–Appalachian State in 2017. More than 6,170 games have been played since.
Naturally, the board treated this as a threat to national security.
The Archduke Didn’t Make Kickoff
PinhotiVol, checking in from Rock Springs, Georgia, said fifteen minutes wasn’t going to change the course of history.
BlueCollarVol disagreed. “Tell that to Archduke Franz Ferdinand. His driver made a wrong turn, put the car in front of an assassin, and the man got shot. Next thing you know, World War I.”
He was also citing the Titanic and Napoleon as evidence that schedules should not be messed with. The Titanic met an iceberg. Napoleon waited for the ground to dry at Waterloo and lost an empire. Not once did anybody ask why these people couldn’t just kick off at seven.
PinhotiVol: “The Titanic left Southampton on schedule.”
BlueCollarVol: “And look where that got their asses.”
Somebody pointed out that neither the Titanic nor Napoleon was playing Kentucky.
“Exactly,” BlueCollarVol said. “They didn’t even have to deal with David Smith.”
Then came the Dark Mode uniforms. Fifteen minutes later means fifteen minutes darker, which apparently means the Tennessee receivers will disappear into the night like a black Labrador running across a Walmart parking lot.
PinhotiVol reminded them that Neyland Stadium has lights.
Old Coach U of Tellico wasn’t convinced. “You got a quarterback in a black jersey throwing to a feller in a black jersey. Ball ends up in the hands of a parking attendant outside Gate 21.”
Another poster wondered whether Kentucky’s defense might have trouble seeing Tennessee, too.
“Don’t matter,” Old Coach replied. “They already run right around our right tackle in broad daylight.”
Pantone compulsively typed, “FIRE ELARBEE”.
The Dresser Offensive
MaryvilleVol72 had a more immediate problem.
“At six o’clock I’m in the recliner with a beer and the remote. My wife knows the game’s on. But at six-oh-three she can come through the door and ask me to move a dresser.”
“Tell her no,” somebody wrote.
“You married?”
Nobody answered.
Pinhoti suggested turning the television on at six and acting like the game had started.
“She’s got a phone, genius. Last time I tried that, by 6:07 I was holding one end of a dresser sideways while she blamed me because her end wouldn’t fit through the damn door.”
BlueCollarVol said fifteen minutes was plenty of time to get sent to Lowe’s for one screw, drive to the wrong Lowe’s, and bring home a screw nobody’s manufactured since 1988. By then the toilet’s leaking through the Baptist nursery and somehow it’s your fault.
“That’s not a scheduling issue,” Pinhoti said.
“Neither was the iceberg.”
Old Coach U had once climbed a ladder to change a lightbulb before kickoff. His wife looked up and said, “Since you’re already up there, that ceiling fan’s been wobbling.”
He missed two quarters and a wedding reception. The fan still wobbles.
Somebody suggested recording the game.
“You want me watching a recording while every asshole in East Tennessee texts me the score?”
Forty minutes later, MaryvilleVol72 returned to the thread.
“Wife wants the dresser moved upstairs.”
PinhotiVol: “The game’s not until Saturday.”
MaryvilleVol72: “That’s what I told her.”
He went offline. Three men kept refreshing the thread. Nothing.
BlueCollarVol gave the first score of the evening.
“David Smith 14, Tennessee 0. And we ain’t even kicked off.”
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