Crushed Orange on Rocky Top

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Where did I go this weekend? Here are a few hints: a smokey dog, an iconic checkerboard, and a unique shade of orange. Still stumped? Before I tell you, let's keep it real for a minute.

I saw a headline through the windows of the journalism building this morning that scared me: “AP News: New Covid-19 Strain Spreads Faster Than Previous Versions.” My heart stopped, wondering if I was unknowingly taking part in a new disaster movie. Much of 2020 has felt that way. But it’s not the disaster movie we all expected; most of us take precautions while others act like nothing is out of the ordinary. We’ve even got a new pair of vaccines being rolled out just in time for the holidays. But that doesn’t mean that everything has gone back to normal, as much as we all want it to be. I’ve tried to err on the side of caution, since that seems the rational thing to do. Pascal’s Wager and all. In that spirit, I present to you my final college football trip of the regular season, which is wrapped up in as much 2020 as I can make it.

For those who haven’t looked at the title of this post, or the location, I ended up going to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. As a perfect way to round out 2020, this wasn’t my first choice. Sorry, Tennessee fans. Your team hasn’t done anything all year, and I have visited your stadium four times in the past decade. My first choice had been the Georgia game versus Vanderbilt, which was canceled on Monday after already being postponed from December 5. Sadly, that means that I didn’t attend a home game at the University of Georgia for the first time since 2006. My second choice was the Sun Belt Conference Championship Game at Coastal Carolina University, since they’re “America’s Team” according to some in the media, but that game was canceled on Thursday night. I woke up to that information on Friday. I had been considering visiting Tennessee, because ticket prices were reasonable, they were playing the fifth-ranked Texas A&M Aggies, and it’s only a 4-hour drive from my house. Plus, I hadn’t been there since 2017. And there was the possibility of an upset, since Tennessee had just won their first game last week after losing the previous six in a row.

But I’ll be up front: there’s no love lost for Tennessee in my book. They were one of the first teams I learned to hate, after that 1998 national championship got rubbed in my face all summer at camp the next year. And I’ve only ever attended one game (out of nine) where Tennessee won, and it was an absolute gut punch (just ask Tennessee fans about the Georgia game in 2016; I’ve unfriended people on social media for reposting videos of the ending of that game). But I’ve grown softer on Tennessee in the stretches where they’re terrible; those years are pretty regular these days.

Take my conversation with an elder gentleman in the parking lot of my hotel this morning. He asked whether I was going to the game today. When I said yes, he told me that he had just been listening to the radio show in his car. I responded that the talk probably wasn’t very good. His reply: “Well, can’t be good all the time.”

It always surprises me how fickle the fan base is, though, when it comes to game attendance. Even in the year of Covid, Neyland Stadium was permitted to accommodate up to 25 percent capacity, which is over 25,000 fans! This game had one of the sparsest crowds I’ve seen at a game this season, perhaps due to the chilly weather, or the lack of faith in the team, or what have you. But it’s not fear of Covid keeping the fans away, based on what I saw in other parts of Knoxville. “What pandemic?” the whole state of Tennessee seems to ask.

Since I didn’t even think I was going to attend a game this weekend after Covid got in the way of my top two options, I was pretty late leaving on Friday. But once the decision was made, I knew I wanted to get to Knoxville in time to enjoy a good meal and a good night of sleep. The drive was rather uneventful, though it is always a treat to drive through the Great Smoky Mountains as a way of avoiding Atlanta. I will always make that choice in the daytime.

Just over 4 hours later, I was sitting in Calhoun’s restaurant, which bills itself as “The Taste of Tennessee.” It has several locations in eastern Tennessee, but I chose the original on Kingston Pike, which is on the western side of Knoxville. I thought it might be a while before I could be seated, but they directed me to the bar area, and within 5 minutes, I had ordered my food and was enjoying a drink. I got a beef brisket sandwich, and that’s probably the tenderest, juiciest brisket I’ve ever tasted. I couldn’t eat it all, though, so I took it back to the hotel room for later. Then I went to find a Tennessee face mask, which I finally found at Kohl’s.

Breakfast the next morning was at First Watch, which I thought was going to have lots of police officers. Nope. Mostly families, but they did have something I hadn’t seen before: cinnamon chip pancakes! I do love some cinnamon, and this variety of it did not disappoint. Unlike at Keke’s in Orlando, there was only a single pancake, and I definitely wish there had been more. The scrambled egg and turkey sausage did help, though. After that, it was time to get to the stadium.

On Friday night, I had searched for game parking, and it was awful. I could pay $40 on campus, or $20 downtown, or $10 on the other side of town, over a mile away. So I took my chances instead, hoping to find some church or something near the stadium who would allow me to park for $10 or so. But there was nothing like that. In fact, there was nothing at all. A little before 9:00 AM, just over 3 hours before game time, Knoxville was a ghost town. And Knoxville is the third-largest city in Tennessee. Where were all the people?

I drove past the main part of campus and turned right onto Sixteenth Street, hoping to find signs of life. Or signs of parking. After 4 blocks, I found some street parking with no signs, no yellow curb, no decal needed, and took my chance. It looked like student apartments in the area, though it wasn’t exactly a nice part of town (and if I’m totally frank, no part of Knoxville’s downtown area has ever looked like it’s the ‘nice’ part of town to me). The temperature was still below freezing, so I got my warm things on and left my car behind, hoping it would be there when I returned. (Spoiler: it was.)

My second random encounter of the day (after the elder gentleman with his radio) involved a young black man. His race is important for this story, so back off. I was walking toward the Sunsphere, Knoxville’s only landmark outside of the university, when I noticed a beat-up car stopped in an intersection which then moved past me as I walked in the opposite direction. A few seconds later, this young fellow is walking behind me a good ways and is calling to me to get my attention. I turn around once I realize he wants me, and as I do, he puts his hands up, signaling he’s unarmed. I freeze, and he approaches me trying to reassure me that he’s just a normal guy, even though he’s black, and that he’s in need of some assistance. It was a sad commentary on the state of affairs in this country. I let him know that I wasn’t afraid, and he put his arms down. He seemed nervous, going on about having just got out of prison, wanting to get some gas to go to Walgreen’s and get something for Christmas for his daughter, etc. He showed me his ID, and it was obvious he was in some kind of emotional distress. He kept babbling about Jesus and anything I could do to help, so I cut him off: “Do you want money? Is that what you’re asking for?” “Anything you can do to help, I don’t know….” So I took out my wallet—maybe some of you are calling me stupid or a sucker here—and gave him all the cash I had. He was lucky I had any at all, even though it was just $16. I think he thought it was just some ones, since that was visible on the outside, but his eyes lit up when he saw the five and the ten. He said thanks and then walked back to his car. I turned to keep going to my destination. Maybe it turned out well for him. I hope so.

I got to the World’s Fair Park, home of the Sunsphere, a few minutes later. Like the rest of the town, it was deserted. I didn’t really want to go up in the thing, but it makes for a nice landmark to orient yourself while in Knoxville. So I followed the train tracks away from there, over to the north side of the University of Tennessee campus, where I found The Hill, which is apparently the original location of the university. It makes sense, since it truly is above all the land around it. It’s a good vantage point for the Tennessee River, as well as the rest of campus and the downtown Knoxville area. I climbed The Hill, where I found The Circle, a circular road around which I’m assuming is where most of the administration and several of the classroom buildings are located. Then, through a tunnel of stairs, I descended on the southern side of the Hill to find my first up-close views of Neyland Stadium and the Student Union.

The views of campus so far were actually quite pleasant; I could see why people could fall in love with this place. But they call it “Rocky Top,” which is probably