Coach Bryant: This is perhaps too obvious, but there is little doubt that since the apotheosis of General Robert E. Lee there has not been as much hero worship directed toward an individual until the time of Paul William “Bear” Bryant. There are goods odds that you could walk into any mom and pop diner in most parts of Alabama and start a very healthy debate amongst people that adamantly believe that debating is for sissies, if you threw out this question: Greater man; General Lee or Coach Bryant. Rest assured he wasn’t the only coach to take his Alabama teams to the Promised Land. But he was however, the best and most of the modern association with Alabama’s football glory days begins and ends with him.

There are a few things that need to be stated about the man and the legend though. First of all, it’s Coach Bryant. If you refer to him as Bear you are a rival fan or brain-dead. Bear is a title that shows disrespect to the man, similar to the way calling a senior citizen by their first name if you don’t really know them is disrespectful. He was “Coach”, first and foremost.

If you find a crimson and white person’s respect (or if you prefer, deification) of Coach Bryant silly or poorly placed then to quote Ricky Bobby “fuck you”. Crimson and white people could give two red cents about your opinion on that subject. If you feel the need to point out that he drank to much or was of questionable character at times then you are simply jealous and crimson and white people are well armed with anecdotes that prove you are merely hating.

To prove their devotion, a new book is published about him about every 36 hours. If you missed the latest one, don’t worry there will be another in about, oh, 10 minutes. The books are increasing at such a rate that soon someone will have to build the Paul Bryant Library, which will naturally be located next to the Bryant Museum, which is on Bryant Drive, not too far from the Bryant Bridge and Bryant High School and a conveniently located branch of the Bryant Bank, just to house all the books about Bryant himself.

Don’t kid yourself and think that simple knowledge of him it is all that is required. It is also an obsession with all things associated with him. Like Golden Flake Potato Chips, Coca Cola, Chesterfield cigarettes, and most especially…

Houndstooth: Houndstooth is uniquely associated with Alabama, and considering the way merchandisers have latched onto it recently, that may not be such a good thing. While its significance does originate from a few of the fedoras the patriarch (see above) once wore, the term and pattern began infiltrating the fan base shortly after his passing if not before.

Is it good enough just for hats, tasteful coats and ladies dresses? Absolutely not. Following the rule that if it looks good on a few things it’s got to look good on oh-my-sweet-lord everything you can now find houndstooth on baseball caps, hair bows, shirts, pants, skirts, beer coozees, glasses, underwear, thongs and bras (never seen that personally but positive it has to exist), and galoshes. Let’s face it, much like “Living La Vida Loca”, over-saturation has taken a thing of beauty and destroyed it for everyone involved. Nonetheless crimson and white people love houndstooth.

Sweet Home Alabama: It is without question the unofficial anthem for the University of Alabama. It is played before during and after every home football game. Crimson and white people cannot get enough of it. In fact, there are scientific studies, being paid for with grant money, right now to prove that at some location somewhere in the state of Alabama “Sweet Home Alabama” is being played. It is a virtual certainty that during any given tailgate session it is being played in at least a dozen tents and the total play count for the day would be in the tens of millions. In fact, if Lynard Skynard could recoup the royalties for every single play on any given game day, they could donate that money to the U.S. Treasury and erase the national debt in one fell swoop. Guaranteed.

The love of the song also makes every Alabama fan an absolute authority on the band as well. Visitors are advised not to say the words “Freebird” or “Curtis Low” while on the quad prior to a game unless they are prepared to watch three VH-1 specials on the band and hear several versions of the songs, including covers and the “awesome bootleg Aunt Rhonda got from the ‘76 tour”!

Daniel Moore: Fans of the crimson and white are also art connoisseurs. If by art connoisseurs you mean will go absolutely, fricking nuts for paintings of moments in Alabama football lore. Daniel Moore is the artist of choice, even now, in spite of a falling out with UA administration over the distribution of royalties. His paintings of great moments that are simply described by one or two words are in dens, living rooms and offices all over the region. Mention “The Kick”, “The Catch”, “The Sack”, “The Goal Line Stand”, “The Kick 2″, and “The Coach and 315″ and any crimson and white person worth their salt can immediately visualize the moment as it appears captured forever in oil. Not only that, they could also tell you what number of the limited series they own and where they bought it.

Many a smooth sailing marriage has run aground based on nothing more than the husband’s desire to proudly display the only thing he will ever consider “art” and his wife’s desire to relegate said “art” to the guest bedroom (or closet) because it doesn’t work with the new French Provencal motif she was working on in the parlor. [PARLORS?? --H.]

The art of Daniel Moore, in all its greatness, could also render a quick lesson in economics; true fans are willing to pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars for a painting of an Alabama team blocking a field goal in State College, Pennsylvania while the Auburn fan next door wouldn’t wipe his butt with the same canvas.

Of course, there haven’t been that many great moments in Alabama football history lately. Mr. Moore still has to pay the bills and so Alabama faithful can expect these new masterpieces: “Take the Money and Run”, showing Franchoine getting on a plane with Texas A&M on its tail, “Deer in the Head Lights” which is a collage of moments of Shula on the sidelines, “All the Way to the Bank” which is a scene from 2007 where Coach Saban leans over a contract with a distinct grin while members of the media and a crowd wearing Miami and LSU themed apparel look on in shock.

And while he is certainly loved by crimson and white people his work hasn’t been limited to strictly to Alabama. Mr. Moore has in the past branched out to other schools in the conference, even rivals. When the Lilliputian spawn of the anti-christ himself was the coach of Auburn, Mr. Moore painted a life size, full body portrait of Terry Bowden in the standard 2′ by 3′ canvas. Also an inside source tells us that even now he has started on a new masterpiece of the most bitter rival to be titled “The Chop Block”.

Big Expensive Four Wheel Drive Pickups:

Current students of the University somehow have the need to go off-road quite a bit despite the current expansion of campus and the improvement of the infra-structure. This requires them to have full-size, four-wheel-drive pickup truck manufactured by Chevrolet and Ford. We aren’t referring to the cheap basic models either; no they need the four-door, all the options, burn more fuel in a year than most Eastern European countries model. The Warn winch with heavy duty bumper and fog and spot lights mounted to it for those extra dark nights at the frat house or apartment complex is also preferred as is the ginormous tool box despite a lack of tools to fill it. The vehicle is also required to have Browning and Ducks Unlimited stickers on its rear window.

All these vehicles cost more than the starting average yearly pay of degree holders from any major university, leading the average onlooker to ask, “Why do you need that much truck? You’re from Hoover” This often brings the following response: “I know my dad’s a CPA and the only land we own is the half-acre lot our house is on in Mountain Brook, but you never know when I might have to hook up to that fifth-wheel trailer of hay and haul it through snow and mud.

Conformance: Crimson and white people, love to look just like every other member of their gender on campus. For the males that means the same ridiculous looking bang intensive hair cut, Costa Del Mar sun glasses, a knit shirt with an alligator or polo player on it, and depending on the time of year, shorts and Rainbow sandals or boat shoes, or faded jeans and slip-on work boots or grey New Balance tennis shoes for the colder or more formal functions. For females it’s Uggs, Nike shorts and swap tee-shirt during the day and a party dress and heels at night even if they’re just going to Phil’s for wings and a pitcher.

Whatever the occasion the important thing is that other than the color they all have to be as close to the same as possible. A member of the herd should not dare try to show any self expression or break the trend.

Conspiracy Theories: Because Alabama is in fact the Mecca of college football [*snicker* --The City Of Baton Rouge], it is logical that every other team and fan base would love to keep them down. Why? Most probably out of jealousy. The enemies of the true faith, or heathen (pronounced he-therns around these parts) have had some success lately. That is the only logical reason that Alabama has lost three straight to Georgia, is 3-9 and 6-6 with Tennessee and Mississippi State respectively over the last twelve seasons and lost a gut-wrenching lost six in a row to Auburn. All the haters want to keep them down. They call the NCAA and report things – that they probably do themselves – to keep from getting in trouble. They work closely with the NCAA (whom is loathed by the fan base), SEC, the FBI, the Justice Department, ESPN, recruiting services (some of them at least Tom Lunginbill – we’re watching you), message board moderators, and bloggers to keep Alabama from taking her natural place at the front of the pack. Everyone is out the them but they will not be deterred. They will keep plugging along and when an Alan Jackson Concert is cancelled just because Alabama was leading in ticket sales and on-line voting and the haters didn’t want to see a success there they will all know that it’s an effort to hold us back.

National Championships: If you are going to compare yourself with others then there must be a unit of measurement to quantify the comparison. For crimson and white people that unit is the National Championship. The school officially claims twelve and you can’t swing a dead cat around in Tuscaloosa without hitting something to remind you of that, be it the flags that fly atop Bryant-Denny Stadium or the tee-shirt of the coed staggering hung-over out of her dorm to go to class. The odd thing is that there are upwards of 18 national titles that have been awarded throughout the long history of the program but usually rivals (and not impartial national pundits) like to point out flaws in the logic, or legitimacy of the awarding agency. But regardless of your measuring stick, Alabama has won a lot of National Championships, especially more than any other member of the conference, of which they have won more conference titles as well, and most especially more than little brother (Auburn). Crimson and white people all know this and coupled with the top-tier status in total wins, bowl games attended, and bowl games won, it gives them infallible evidence that their team is amongst the greatest of the great.

They are also not about to concede that a time in the desert means that they are not, in-fact, the chosen people. Little things like losing streaks and records in the current decade mean very little. They say to those who enjoy success at the expense of their suffering; congratulations, enjoy your time in the sun. Even the younger fans, born in exile, have seen the goal posts come down in an opponent’s stadium or the billboard come up, celebrating the defeat of the once and ever-present Goliath. At the same time they cannot recall ever charging the home field to tear their own uprights from the turf. After all, regardless of the opponent or the record coming into the game, the Tide is supposed to prevail, and to the man crimson and white people believe that. They want you to rest assured the phoenix will arise from the ash and they knew all along that it would.

Thank you kindly, sirs. The rest of you may now proceed to squall that these posts should be written by rival fans, until the next post written by a rival fan, after which you will shriek that only TRUE ALUMS can poke fun at their alma mater. Binkies are available in the lobby.

Past installments may be read here, here, here, here, and here

Mandals. Don’t want to wear socks, but don’t want to look too gay/hippy/liberal with Jesus sandals? Rock yourself some mandals, Red and Black person. It’s just all part of that “laid-back groove” thing you’ve got going on. Or being horrifically lazy. They’re both Red and Black People concepts you’ll see pass through time and time again here.

Obviously not a real Georgia fan, as he’s not wearing white ankle socks with them.

Gwinnett County. Georgia has famously only traveled to play a football game somewhere else once, and it was to Atlanta to play Georgia Tech. Little known fact: every “road” game you might have seen the Georgia Bulldogs is in fact a simulation created by the Georgia Tech School of Computer Engineering, who does the work as a contractor for the University of Georgia. If this seems unusual to you, consider that Tech owes Georgia for the vicious but humorous practical joke of playing Reggie Ball at quarterback for four years (record: perfect! 0-4.)

Gwinnett County embraces everything UGA fans could want: a featureless wash of broad roads, convenient fat/grease repositories, and 4BR/3BA houses strewn wantonly on stultifyingly boring land kinda sorta halfway between Athens and the necessary evil of Atlanta. Red and Black People will often brag fervently about not leaving the county for months, sometimes years at a time, ‘cept for the obligatory odyssey 40 minutes up the road to Athens, where kids have “just gotten too weird for my tastes, frankly.”

The love for Gwinnett County is balanced by a horror of all things Atlanta, including repeated warnings to “stay away from downtown!” You might catch black, gay…or worse still, Techie.

Cryogenic sleeping chambers. Red and Black people, it is our fervent hope that you lavished affection on your mothers before they reached the peak of ripeness, because they are now lost to you forever. At the age of thirty-five, the pancake makeup comes out, the hair goes “ash blonde”, and Georgia women cease to age for the next fifty years, until an errant grandchild kicks them in the shins and they shatter into a thousand frozen shards.

Methodism. You call that half-assed sprinkling “baptism”? Our God is an awesome God, but a brahsome God wants your ass in the creek risking parasitic infection or mercury poisoning for His favor. And they do baptize babies, but we all have our trials to bear. Who says the South is a hostile environment for minorities?

Least they ain’t Catholic! Shine on, wee oppresséd starlings; SHINE AWN.

Widespread Panic. At least the Grateful Dead inspired such loyalty as to make their fans put getting to the show above hygiene: “Panic,” the universal beige hippie batik audio fabric behind almost all young Red and Black people events, is a noodle-y jam band so piss-poor their fans actually bathe and go home after the shows. In fact, Panic–and it’s “Panic,” never “Widespread Panic,” doesn’t even ask their fans to do so much as do that twirly hippy dance prevalent at all jam band concerts.

In fact, Widespread Panic doesn’t really demand anything from their their fans except the purchase of a ticket and a prone position on the grass. If you’re noticing a theme: Red and Black people are astonishingly lazy, and demand that their music be given to them in a tasteless, formless, and shapeless musical suppository taken aurally while lying prone on the grass of an ampitheatre.

Dude! Eighth solo! I’m SOOO high. Fuck you, Widespread Panic, because you have an all-organic, flabby, vegan-fart-smelling miserable weedstink all your own. We have recurrent fantasies of Dethklok’s huge stage landing on a Panic concert and crushing everything in sight, leaving only Tevas and kind of floppy haircuts in its heartless wake as testament to the crap.

Pardon us. Dethklok already did just that.

Add the Panic sticker to your Ford Explorer so Dethklok can identify you for killing. Just having the “W: the President” and Bass Pro Shops sticker isn’t enough, as you may be confused for any other Southern college student.

Outlet Malls. Yesterday’s fashions today! You’ll find the Georgia landscape littered with pink and seafoam green compounds giving country mice a taste of CITY LIVIN’ at 10-40% off retail.

No, we’re not walkin’ to the Old Navy. It’s ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE PARKING LOT!

Goatees: Mostly for the older men. Like the finches of the Galapagos, the mustache changed its shape under evolutionary fashion pressures. (If you went to school in Cobb County, just insert “JESUS TOUCHED THEM WITH HIS GENETIC CHANGE-O-STICK AND MADE ‘EM DIFFERENT JUST CAUSE AND THAT’S WHY HE MISSED THAT WHOLE RWANDA THING SORRY BOUT THAT.”)

Somewhere between 1986 and 1989, the mustache became an unacceptable familiar of highway killers and serial rapists, mostly because most highway killers and serial rapists did indeed seem to have mustaches. This brought forth a dark period for mustachioed men: what to do? Sail on ’til the world spins my way again fad-wise and go against the grain of social convention, or–heavens!–shave.

Fortunately, a savior arrived.

And because Stone Cold said so, the goatee took an unlikely step away from the “facial hair of choice for Ministry fans” to “the mustache with a basement add-on.” You know this is true for one reason, Red and Black people: your church’s youth pastor has or had one. It also “covers” a weak chin, meaning it “makes every one notice how you grew a goatee to hide the slack flap of skin between your lower lip and Adam’s apple.” Only the chinstrap beard screams “compensatory facial hair” more than the closely trimmed goatee, and yours is most definitely closely trimmed, Red and Black person.

White rappers besides Eminem.

Bud Light. In a coozy, motherfuckers. (Your pastor heard you read that!) You can drink four hundred of these in a weekend. So can anyone else, but you’ll tell everyone exactly how many you drank, because Red and Black People are beer accountants of the first degree. Also, in keeping with the extreme laziness of Red and Black people, Bud Light comes in unbreakable bottles you may throw directly on the beautiful green lawns of the UGA campus. (Seriously, it’s gorgeous until game day.)

Bud Light, while preferred, is not perfect. Only when it comes with pull-tab spouts on the bottom of the bottle will perfection arrive, as gravity will do the work formerly done with all that strenuous lifting of the hand to the mouth by the arm.

Black guys, and not black chicks. Black dude? No problem. Seriously man, no problem. Hell, if my sister slept with Knowshon Moreno, I’d take pictures and tell her not to use birth control. Her vagina would at least put up more resistance than Florida did last year. Black dudes are cool. You can even take ‘em to Panic concerts! They just groove right in. No problem there.

Black chick? Um, can I be real honest with you? Their hair freaks me out, man, and I’m afraid they’ll laugh at my penis when I get naked. But Knowshon can bang my sister. Any day, man. Her hoo-hah is his endzone, and I’m signalling a score with both hands in the air, like “WOOO GO DAWGS! SIC ‘EM ROO ROO ROO ROO ROO!”

Baseball caps with frayed bills. Mandatory. Should look like a wolf has been nibbling on it.

Golf. Lazy strikes again. Red and Black people choose, as their primary sport, the indolent form of horseless polo that plagues this state: golf. And if forced to choose between walking around the “natural” contours of a golf course or watching football, we tell you this, football fans: there would be trepidation in the ranks.

Golf: it sucks, and Red and Black people love it.

Consider all of the key ingredients contained in golf: doing very little, drinking shitty beer, and wearing golf shirts. Triple score, Red and Black People. The slavish worship given the Masters–a course started as a tax dodge by wealthy New Yorkers in the 1930s and run by assholes who wouldn’t let lowly plebe you take a solid gold shit on the course–actually diminished the attendance of the spring game for years.

You may also pee outside and it’s totally acceptable. This is another thing making golf irresistable to Red and Black people. (Editor’s note: we’ll endorse this aspect of golf. Especially peeing on your fellow golfer mid-swing. “Hey, they turned the sprinklers on early!” Hilarious!)

One way head: A.K.A, the Athens Frat guy special: he gets it, you give it, and then the whiskey ends the evening. Judging from the trials of our single friends in Atlanta, this sexual phishing scam extends well into adulthood.

QuikTrip. It involves buying cheap gas, having minorities wait on them, and purchasing sugary beverage and beef jerky. All are TOPSCORE for Red and Black people.

Dickies. Yes, the red ones. Red and Black people enjoy remembering exactly one thing to accompany every event or turn of events. Football game? Seal bark: “ARP! RED PANTS!” LSU fans? “ARP! CORN DOGS!” Florida fans? “ARP! JEAN SHORTS!” Atlanta? “ARP! DON’T GO DOWNTOWN ARP!” This whole post? “42-30 ARP!” The uniform consistency of responses is seal-like, and will win you bar bet after bar bet with strangers who doubt that any one group of people outside the Midwest could be so homogenous in behavior and belief. ARP!

Hemp necklaces: Hippie, and not gay. Thrown away the instant you start interviewing for clerkships in law school, a sad moment because, you know, that kinda skinny blond girl gave it to you.

With the cap, the sandals, and the option of growing floppy Bama Bangs (brand-neutral name? ‘Brah Blinds), it’s all part of a carefully composed “casual” look that lets people know you are in “college.”

Boiled peanuts. Holly put this one on here like it’s a bad thing, but we adore boiled peanuts. No foul here, even with the stuttering crampy shits boiled peanuts inevitably give you in the 24 hours following consumption. Get me a Bud Light–don’t forget the coozy!–and we’re snacking and macking, man. And seriously, if your pastor walks by, we’ll hold the beer.

Chik-Fil-A. Double bonus on good things Red and Black People like, because we start off every morning of every day craving the battercrack of Chik-Fil-A. Including Sundays, when you churchy little nancies take the day off to “spend time with family” and “not make me the goddamn chicken sandwiches that we start shaking if we don’t eat at least one of a week, YOU HEARTLESS BASTARDS!!! A REAL GOD WOULDN’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO ME WHEN I WANT IT ON SUNDAYS!!!”

TCOAN is fond of asking me if we want Chik-Fil-A. The answer is always yes, and then a quick glance at the calendar reveals it’s Sunday. She smiles, and then goes back to reading her book. This is how you break a man one snap of the bone at a time, reader.

Herschel. All 237 personalities of him.

Pitchforks and torches. A nine-win season is cause for satisfaction elsewhere in D-I, but in the SEC and Knoxville in particular, it’s a blight. Any win total under double digits lights up the AM radio dial with orange faithful ready to gut their coach like a catfish of astonishing proportions. Going 5-6 in 2005 brought, concurrently and consecutively, collective apoplexy and vows of silence—they still can’t talk about it. Bring up The Season Of Which We Do Not Speak to a Tennessee fan and his eyes will glaze over in rage or incomprehension. Either way, Does Not Compute.

Orson’s note: Wonder who those people in Frankenstein who, when confronted with a problem, immediately rush to get a.) an impaling instrument, and b.) fire? For any problem? Tennessee fans, that’s who. They’re threatening Frankenstein because, with some time in the weight room, he could be the next John Henderson, but noooooo, he wants to kidnap maidens and accidentally drown little girls in lakes all day like a bad monster.

John Henderson rocks fat titties all day, by the way, despite playing for a team we despise. “BLOOD MAKES THE GRASS GROW!” comes from his sideline rantings in college, and he also did this, which is now how we wake up every morning.

We do it just like that. Except the wife does it with a padded white glove, and she does it softly, so as not to knock my exfoliating facial mask off. Sometimes she gets a little too into it, and some of the dust lands on our white oxford shirt! It’s a funny time, the mornings in the Swindle house!

HFCS That’s high fructose corn syrup, friends, and it is a fact of natural law that the highest concentration of HFCS swollen people on the planet reside in Tennessee. We once saw a woman in white sweatpants crossing Hillsboro road whose ass, perched atop three asses already, had its own ass with advertising sold on it claiming you could book space on the other four asses for reasonable prices. She was wearing a Tennessee sweatshirt, natch.

The Pudgy Parallelogram groans against the weight of its own geometric borders with the surfeit of HFCS-themed goodies: Smoky Mountain Salt Water Taffy (Orange with white lines=tasty, orange with green lines=ass-flavored anise crapsticks), Goo-goo bars, the odd bag of circus peanuts stashed in the glove (good for recovery after the workout, man,) and whatever other high-fructose vehicles manage to land in the seven bins of temptation greeting you in the line at Cracker Barrel.

And if it wasn’t bad enough, the following restaurants are headquartered in Tennessee proper:

–Krystal
–Cracker Barrel
–Logan’s Roadhouse
–O’Charley’s (full disclosure: Dad used to be in charge there, so we know their evil buttery rolls better than most)
–Perkins

You’re fifteen pounds down in the chips just to start. Add to that a statewide fascination with the pig–a spectrum moving from barbecue on the west end and transitioning to blood-pressure spiking country ham on the east end–and staying under 200 pounds in the state is an accomplishment in and of itself. If you told us they trained local heart surgeons to perform angioplasty with ice cream scoops, we’d believe it. (Advantage: fascination with pork ensures Tennessee SHALL NEVER BE TAKEN BY GAY MUSLIM TERRORISTS.)

(Clay Travis may insist Florida girls have fat arms against all evidence to the contrary, but that’s because there’s a contrast between one fat part of the body and another.)

Hunting camo. Worn with the orange Vols shirt, of course, an outfit signalling that even though you may have gotten a lucrative job with that investment bank in New York/Atlanta/Nashville, you’re still gully enough to put on the bib, smear a little deerpiss on the ankles of your pants, and get down at the tailgate with some Evan Williams and Coke.

(Tricky move, the Evan Williams: it’s the trashy whiskey of your youth, and a deliberate ironic nod to that. However, is everyone with you, semantically speaking? Do they realize you can afford Maker’s, and are just going back to the Brown Bomber for funzies, or are they not far enough along in their walk with Ironic Jesus to understand the triple move you’re making here? If so, why are you hanging out with them?)

For those doubling up a football weekend with a hunting trip–a not uncommon occurrence–it serves as a multipurpose single outfit for the whole weekend, and comes off in a pinch for quick hay-rollin’ or celebratory nudity, which you won’t do because no fun please, we’re Baptist, and also because you’re not LSU fans, who will get naked for three dollars and a can of Miller Lite.

The Church Of Peyton. A Manning sighting in Knoxville is a bigger draw than Elvis, Oprah, and Jesus Christ combined. A street named in his honor on campus. Afghans knitted in his likeness. “My name’s Peyton”. Volunteers remember, remember the thirteenth of December and rock their Keep Your Fucking Trophy t-shirts to this day with no sense of irony whatsoever.

Orange Oakleys. Vol fans would still be wearing the old Terminator visor models if they could, but being sensitive to shame, they realize they must opt for the smaller, newer variant of the marksman’s classic.

Plus, they look like the ones they wear in the army, which is tough, which by extension makes the wearer second-degree-associative tough. And as with all fandom, it’s all about second-degree-associative tough. (Exception! Soccer hooligans. See? Second-degree-associative tough is NOT a bad thing.)

Critters!

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Rasslin’. An NYC-based friend shares the following anecdote:

I once had a bunch of Knoxville boys stay with me when I lived in Brooklyn, and after some (read: lots of) drinking they began to toss wooden chairs off our fifth-story roof onto the sidewalk below without even checking for innocent bystanders or without thought to property damage, and when I protested, one large one turned to me and said, so straight-faced and innocent and sincere, “Honey, we’re from East Tennessee. We don’t know how to have fun without breakin’ shit.”

True masters of the “Hey, watch’is!” form, when there’s nothing left to throw, there’s always a Volunteer:

Drang, Hold the Sturm. While not as joyless as Ohio State fans (”Fuckin’ right, dickbag!”, says the Ohio State retorter,) Tennessee fans certainly possess a high degree of drang without the sturm Games begin with an almost socialist-feeling recitation of General Neyland’s maxims, and then the running of the T, and then the same ceremonies beginning every game, and the same glorious Orange and White People’s Song, which all children must learn by heart in school, as their forefathers did and so on and so forth as Tennessee runs the fancified Fulmerbone-I form-snoozefest right at the opposing D….

It’s making us sleepy just typing it. How anyone watches it for a whole season is beyond us (Chavis’ maiming defense is fun to watch, though, especially Eric Berry, who we’re kidnapping, brainwashing, renaming “Wondy Pierre-Louis,” and enrolling at Florida in a few weeks. Tennessee fans enter the game with gritted teeth, which is why the pitchforks come out so quickly, and also why Neyland is funereal when they get down by ten points to anyone regardless of the clock or the situation.

Not to unfairly contrast them with LSU fans, but when Tennessee fans are down, the reaction is this:

Tennessee fan: I hate this. I hate you. I hate everything. LuAnn, get your hand off my shoulder. Ain’t no pain in the world gonna take the ache outta my heart right now. I hate you all and want you to die.

LSU fan, in same situation: WE GONNNNNAAAA KICK YO AAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSSS!!!!

Of course, that’s an LSU fan’s reaction to being up by 14, or down by seventy, or just ordering a Popeye’s lunch special on a Wednesday. So perhaps the contrast is unfair, but the truth remains: Tennessee fans approach games with the emotion of relentlessly committed fans, but combine it with a queasy anticipation usually reserved for rectal exams.