What we're really after....

Being a true SEC fan can really lead to some intense discussions. Opposing fans never really see eye to eye on much. Most fans are blinded by their own ambition, every loss is b/c of mistakes your team made--not because the other team was just better. Most true SEC fans tape all their teams games, and then re-watch them during the week. If it's a win, you start watching as soon as College Gamenight is over and you've gone through 3 cups of coffee so you can see Reece Davis and Mark May give 3 passing comments about your team. If it's a loss, you usually need a day of NFL to sober up and recover before you can watch the tape. You watch criticizing almost every offensive call, never giving credit to the opposing defense. The offensive coordinator should be tared and feathered, and that supposed 'blue chip' true freshman QB should start the next game. For those of you who aren't real SEC fans, this is just a glimpse into what our weekends are about. I havn't even brought up the amount of call-in radio broadcasts we listen to.

C.S. Lewis once said "All men's natural desires are to be loved and to feel significant." Nothing could be truer of college football fans. While we do live and die by the win/loss column, i'm suggesting that it's all motivated for attention to feel significant. Think about it...We invest almost as much stock into the actual game as we do into the media's reaction to the game. If your team had huge win, what tops it off is too see the continued highlights and praise given by the Gameday crew. As fans, we don't just want the win--we want it to be all over sportscenter, in SportsIllustrated, and hopefully this will lead to an eventual visit of the gameday crew to your campus. We don't want to just win, We want everyone in the nation to know we WON!! Still don't believe me? Relate to this:

1) Has it ever soothed a loss when you see the gameday crew talk about your game and say your team was "robbed" or "cheated" or "should have won"---

2) Ever been outraged that your team didn't appear in SportsIllustrated the next week following a huge win or great performance?? I've sent in many letters to the editor concerning this, my profanity usually keeps me from being published.

3) Doesn't your hatred for Notre Dame partly derived from the absurd attention they get from all of the media?? Let me let you in on something...NBC...it stands for "Notre dame Broadcasting Company"

4) Are you mad when the CBS crew or ESPN crew doesn't think your team has a chance to win the game today, if your like me, you don't just want to win, but you want to shut up the idiot who thinks you've got no chance.

5) After a win, how many hundreds of Internet pages do you read to see who's saying what about your team, what they did and what they might do the next week.

You see, we're really after ESPN coming to our campus and saying "This is the greatest place to see College Football!!!" We want to be significant, and you know what...it's OK. I'm not sure how we should deal with this or what should come of all of this media frenzy we hope loves us---but I do know this...Sports Illustrated's College Football Issue was just released and Tennessee is nowhere to be found in it. I'm outraged and working on my letter to the editor as we speak!!!!