So, how did you become a UT fan?

[MIAUTIGER]

Orange is good Orange is good

OK...I can try this. Orange and Blue is good.....Orange and Blue is good......Orange and Blue is good......checkered endzones and the Woo suxes!

How was that?

[10EC]

Later, there were deer hunts

LOL - I don't think I saw a UT/UK game before I was in my 20s.  I was always coming in from the woods to listen to the game and then go back out.

[tnflower]

Great story and good reading BOM!

[RockinGrannyVol]

For me....
I've been attending UT football games for 52 years.  Started going with Mom while Dad worked the press box and older brothers sold cokes!   Born and bred a Tennessee Vol.  Will be a Vol until I die.  All my children and grandchildren are Vol fans..even though they are growing up in Georgia. 

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

[Black Diamond Vol]

Well, my Dad went to Marshall, and my Mom to (gag) Florida, so I wasn't exactly born into it.  But being born and raised in TN, I kinda just fell in with my childhood friends who were Vol fans.  But the '85 season and subsequent Sugar Bowl rout of da U sealed the deal for me (as it did for many, many others my age).  There was no turning back at that point.

[73Volgrad]

Saw my first UT game in 1962 when the stadium was renamed Neyland and west upper deck and press box were new.  I went with my step-father who had won tickets from Mayfields milk in Chattanooga.  I do not remember seeing UT on TV in the 1960s.  I became a regular fan when I started UT in 1969.

[ReVOLver]

Revolver's and 10EC's experiences are quite similar to my own, particularly 10EC's.

Revolver likes to give me hell because I'm curmudgeonly when it comes to change. It isn't that I'm a curmudgeon; it's that I'm a hopeless nostalgic. (If being nostalgic in and of itself makes one a curmudgeon, I guess that defines me.) Like Revolver, memories of my childhood revolve around three things: my father, John Ward and UT football.

But for those of us who grew up in rural East Tennessee, it's really much more than that. Around here, you're a Tennessee fan just because you're an East Tennessean. If you're a housewife who doesn't know the difference between a touchdown and a fumble, you still don the orange on Saturdays in the fall and become a vocal supporter of the Vols. That's not so much different than what you find within certain radiuses of other schools across the country, except it is. Around here, there are no other major D-I schools. There are no pro teams. Tennessee football is IT. And that's what makes our fan base so rabid. It's very similar to football in Alabama and basketball in Kentucky.

Still, I guess it goes back to the fact that we cut our teeth on Tennessee football. The first game I actually remember was in the late 1980s, riding with my parents in the Cumberland Mountains above Anderson County. The fall colors were peaking and Dad was always a dedicated foliage-watcher. As we bounced along old coal haul roads high above the Tennessee Valley, John Ward's voice came in loud and clear from the radio station in the valley below.

I don't know how many Saturdays we spent doing that, but it was plenty. There were Saturday afternoons lounging across my grandmother's easy chair, eating apples stolen from the orchard out back while John Ward called the action on an old AM radio that was missing the knob to change the frequency. Saturday afternoon football games in the front yard, where we pretended we were Jeff Francis, Reggie Cobb, or Alvin Harper as the radio played from the front porch. John's voice would pick us up — "45, 40, 35, 30" — as we broke free for our own touchdown run, racing for the big oak tree at the end of the yard that served as our goal line.

Later, there were deer hunts where we'd come out of the woods and eat our lunch of saltine crackers, Vienna sausages and Beanie Weanies at my grandpa's battered old Dodge Ram pickup and listen to part of the game on the radio before heading back in. I remember old coal trucks bouncing along the road where we were parked, as the coal boom was just dying in the mountains of the Cumberland Plateau, and those drivers would have the game playing on their radio, too; the sounds of John and Bill calling the action drifted through their open windows.

On one occasion, our math class took a trip to UT. Some buddies and I slipped away from the rest of the group and headed to Neyland Stadium. None of us had ever been to a game before. We wanted to see what a place that would hold 95,000 people looked like. As luck would have it, the gates were open, as workers prepared for the next day's game. We decided to head down to the field and grab a blade of grass, just 'cause. We almost got to the bottom when a big, burly guy yelled at us. We were busted. Except we really weren't. He sounded mean, but once he found out that we were just seeing Neyland Stadium for the first time, he led us on a tour of the place. It wasn't until I picked up my Football Time magazine a few weeks later and saw his picture inside that I realized we had been given a tour of the stadium by John Chavis.

I remember being at a fall festival in Oneida with my grandmother. She made crafts and sold them. The festival coincided with Tennessee's muzzleloader season for deer, so my grandfather would be hunting and she needed my help setting up and taking down her displays. The highlight of the festival was a steam train arriving from Chattanooga, loaded with people who would ride up the Norfolk-Southern Railroad, enjoying the colors, and stop at the festival for a couple of hours to eat and shop before heading back down the tracks. I had my Walkman on, listening to the UT-Alabama game. I lost count of the number of people walking by who stopped me and said, "What's the score?" So is it a given that if a 13-year-old kid has a Walkman on that he's listening to football? If it's the Third Saturday in October in East Tennessee, it is. (Tennessee lost that one 24-19 when Andy Kelly was intercepted late in the game.)

I was a senior in high school when Peyton Manning held his press conference. Me and a buddy were sitting in the back of our U.S. Government class with my radio. We took the ear phones off the head set and he had one pressed to his ear while I had the other pressed to mine. When Manning said those famous words — "I've made up my mind; I don't expect to ever look back. I'm staying at the University of Tennessee" — we jumped and hooped and hollered. Our teacher just looked at us and shook his head and grinned. (Then he took his own headset off and slipped it into the drawer.) Someone got on the intercom system and announced that Peyton Manning had just announced his intention to come back for his senior season. Applause and cheering erupted up and down the hallway. When does a college football player's press conference interrupt a school day? When it's football in East Tennessee, it does.

Somewhere along the way, it became engrained in me. It wasn't forced on me...but it was inevitable, just the same.

Great story. You've always been quite the writer.

I poke fun at you because you are an old soul and you let it get to you (or at least appear to). 

[BigOrange Maniac]

I poke fun at you because you are an old soul and you let it get to you (or at least appear to). 

Aside from my standard curmudgeonly response ("GET BENT!"), I don't really see where you're coming from there...does disliking full-body ink and Vern Lundquist make me an old soul?   

[XHotlanta]

Went to school there ... but was influenced by my grandmother, a better UT fan than I ever was, or could ever be.  God bless her departed Big Orange soul! 

[crockettman]

Jan 1st 1986...my mom remarried and we moved to Nashville from KY in '84 when I was 15.My step dad grew up in Rockwood and was a big UT fan...Watching UT destroy Miami as 14 pt underdogs and with him whooping and hollering made me wanna watch it even more and I have been a fan ever since.

[CrossVol]

I was born a VOL fan.  Simple as that.

[Quasi EVol]

Tennessee parents.  'Nuff said!

[PirateVOL]

Mostly Bill Dyer and John Ward.  Some of my first memories were reading the Dyergrams on Sunday mornings, then I graduated to listening to John.  The Swamp Rat was my first favorite and yes Emeril the Crossville Comet (and later Blue Angel #2) is still one of my fav RBs (though the raw bacon types in Fayeteville might not share our view ...).

Oh, Mrs PV claims that ReVOLver and certain other orangelife's around here turned me into a ORANGE & WHITE FANATIC.

[BGHarper]

I am a UT Fan cause my Dad brought me up right and introduced me to the ghosts of Vols past...from Neyland to George Cafego and the boys to Peyton Manning and Tee Martin to today's future stars I have always wanted to emulate a certain RB ffrom Crossville TN who was my first hero in Orange to a large degree.  Yes I am speaking of the Crossville Comet Mr Curt Watson.  I have met Curt (I went to high school with his sister) and always thought Curt was the best fullback/rb for short yardages that has ever played at UT.  He got behind Chip Kell and got you that yard when you needed it.

Curt was a great one, and Chip Kell was pretty decent himself (center, if my Crimson memory serves me).

My favorite Vol is Gary Wright. (look it up) Former FG kicker of some note. I think he is somehow related to Daniel Lincoln.


BG:)

[BGHarper]

Mostly Bill Dyer and John Ward.  Some of my first memories were reading the Dyergrams on Sunday mornings, then I graduated to listening to John.  The Swamp Rat was my first favorite and yes Emeril the Crossville Comet (and later Blue Angel #2) is still one of my fav RBs (though the raw bacon types in Fayeteville might not share our view ...).

Oh, Mrs PV claims that ReVOLver and certain other orangelife's around here turned me into a ORANGE & WHITE FANATIC.

The Swamp Rat Dewey Warren was great one, too. As I've already said to Emeril, Curt Watson was a truly great short yardage back. Tough as nails. A few names from my Crimson memory of the some of the first Vols I remember: Steve Kiner, Paul Naumoff (I had to look up the spelling) Lester McClain, Jackie Walker, and Bobby Majors.


BG

[ReVOLver]

Aside from my standard curmudgeonly response ("GET BENT!"), I don't really see where you're coming from there...does disliking full-body ink and Vern Lundquist make me an old soul?   

You said it yourself... you are nostalgic. You are pretty much a traditionalist. You don't like change very much. In my book that makes you an old soul. I mean no offense... Vinnie is also an old soul, he's just a different type. He's more of the 70s rock and roll variety, you're more of the country music variety. 

[BigOrange Maniac]

You said it yourself... you are nostalgic. You are pretty much a traditionalist. You don't like change very much. In my book that makes you an old soul. I mean no offense... Vinnie is also an old soul, he's just a different type. He's more of the 70s rock and roll variety, you're more of the country music variety. 

I'm not offended by your suggestion...I just find it interesting. 

[EmerilVOL]

The Swamp Rat Dewey Warren was great one, too. As I've already said to Emeril, Curt Watson was a truly great short yardage back. Tough as nails. A few names from my Crimson memory of the some of the first Vols I remember: Steve Kiner, Paul Naumoff (I had to look up the spelling) Lester McClain, Jackie Walker, and Bobby Majors.


BG

One of my favorite memories when I was a young whipper snapper was of working out on a hot saturday in late September and listening to John Ward call the game with Auburn.  My mom and dad had bought a piece of property (about 20 acres) of an old farm place that had been in this family's hands for many years and then they sold it to my Mom and Dad.  Well it had grown up quite a bit and there was enough sumac on this property to create a sumac pile twenty feet tall.  I must have cut out enough of that stuff over that fall to give me Hulk arms.  We would work all day Saturday on clearing the land so we could get the house started the next year.  Dad was adamant that he had two kids so he did not need some big ole piee of heavy machinery to clear the land just his two kids.

Well I was listening to John Ward (early 70s timeframe) and he was describing Curt Watson going through the line to get a crucial third down conversion.  It was similar to "Scott turns and hands the ball off the the Crossville Comet and Watson is penetrating the line behind the blocking of Kell.  (as an aside look up Chip Kell's weight - it was 265 and he was the center) They push the pile and yes Curtis Watson has achieved another first down for The Big Orange"

[BanditVol]

My family moved to Knoxville in late May of 1982, during the last big recession and in time to get caught in the traffic from the 1982 World's Fair.   My first memory of a game is when we played LSU that year in early September.  I had not been in town long, was still too young to drive, and had nothing else to do so I listened to the game on my sister's (who was at work) stereo in the dark with headsets while my parents watched some program on TV I didn't care for (It was a night game).  Fuad Reviez hit an incredibly long FG on the last play of the game to tie it (I think it was a 60-yarder).  I really was not a UT fan though, but I did follow them since they were the local team and most of my new friends at school liked them.  I also recall the bammer game that year.  UT broke an 11-game win streak by bammer.  What I recall most was that one of the most popular kids in school, whose parents were from Birmingham, and so was a huge bammer fan, told me I was crazy for saying the Vols could win.  I had some fun with that on the Monday after the game and the kids in that particular class took a liking to me after that (it was Driver's Ed, I think), except of course for the loud mouthed bammer fan.  Fun times.  I had actually been a huge Notre Dame fan since age 11 (moved to Tennessee at 15) but Notre Dame and bammer had a big rivalry in those days and had just finished a home and home series and I didn't care for them at all, so that bonded me with the UT fans.  After that first year, I was only a very casual fan of the Vols, and only because I lived in Knoxville.  In fact, I don't have strong memories of too many other games from the rest of high school.  Then college rolled around and I decided to go to UT, and so then I was a fan for real.  But even in college, I mainly went to games for social reasons.  I was not a "die hard" fan.  Then my senior year we unexpectedly went 11-1 and I happened to have become good friends with a huge fan, and we went to Birminingham for the UT game.  It was a lot of fun in spite of the drubbing.  That all made me a bigger fan.

But I didn't really become a huge fan until I graduated and moved to bammer.  One of my worst game memories is watching the blocked kick roll down the field from my 40-yard line seat in 1990 and knowing I had to go back to bammer and face the crazy fans.  I had been confident we would win.  After all, we were no. 3 in the country and undefeated, and bammer was only 3-3 coming in to the game.  I think I turned against Johnny Majors right there and then, lol.  That season I started to become a huge fan.  It wasn't just the frustration of the bammer game, I remember watching the Vols in the season opening Kickoff Classic and thinking how cool it was to go to a university that had a big time football program I could identify with after graduating.  Suddenly I understood why alumni get so crazy and pay kids.  Football is like a link back to college and source of pride in your school.  From there it just grew.   I attended every bammer game between 1987 and 1998, road and home, and I can't even begin to describe my frustration with that game from 1991 to 1994 (24-19L, 17-10L, 24-24T, 21-14L).  We played them so close EVERY YEAR...and JUST.COULD.NOT.WIN!!!! I remember sitting in the stands in 1994 and wondering seriously if we would ever beat them.  Needless to say, 1995 bammer is one of my favorite games, and I was there to enjoy every minute of it.   

It wasn't just about the bammer series though, it was the fact I think that as soon as I graduated UT started to become a really bigtime program.  Our 1990 team could easily have won it all, and probably should have, and that was the first season after I graduated.  I went to the Sugar Bowl that year, to this day the only bowl game I have attended.  I have fond (if somewhat drunken) memories of it.   Another thing that helped was that in 1991 I started working with a friend who was from Maryville and a co-op student at my place of employment, so he was still in school.  in 1991 and 1992 we would drive up for home games, crash at his brother's condo in Fort Sanders, then party there before heading over to various frat house, condos, apartments, you name it, we made the rounds.  That was something I never had time for in college because I had to study so much, and you can believe I made up for lost time.  To this day, those are some of my fondest memories of UT football.  Not only did I have time to properly party prior to the game, but I had the means to afford to do some things I never did in college.  We typically would end up at his friend's condo a few blocks from the stadium and then a whole mass of screaming students and young alums like me of perhaps 30-40 people decked in orange, with AT LEAST ONE UT flag being waved, would attack the stadium screaming "Go Big Orange" "fizzle bama", "Go Vols" or whatever else we could think of at the top of our lungs.  To this day, I have never felt so much a part of the experience as I did in those days.  Good times!

From there I was a big fan throughout the 90s.  It helped that during that entire period our team was building up to the MNC in 1998.  Every year seemed to leave me a bit hungrier.  It's almost hard to relate to now, because we got so spoiled later.  I still remember being thrilled with the attention UT got in 1996.  We had just expanded our stadium to the largest in the country (even beating Michigan for awhile), Wuerffel and Manning were the top Heisman candidates and UT and UF were both in the top 5 in the country.  I can recall being excited about that game all summer.  The funny thing is, I went with a friend from work who was not even a Vol fan, he just wanted something to do that weekend, and we made the mistake of buying student tickets when that was the first year they really cracked down on being able to get in with them.   We ended up watching it in a sports bar, and I almost got into a fight with some gators.  But the main reason I bring that game up is that 3-4 years later games like that seemed almost routine.  It seems like from that point to early 2002, just about every game UT had was big in some ways.  That was the peak. 

Anyway, I have had many good times since then, such as the 2005 LSU game I attended with Pirate, and hope to have many more.  I will always be a big UT fan, and hope we get to the top again, but I will root just as hard no matter what.

Part of me also thinks that as a country we are way too serious about sports, and that it would be all funner if people took it less seriously.  It's supposed to be entertainment, but some people act like their lives depend on it, particularly down here in ole bammy.