First posted here Sep 21, 2015. Except for daughter #1 having graduated, and my moving to CO 3+ years ago, pretty much the rest is as true today as ever.
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Let me share with you why I hate UT.
I am a lifelong Gator fan. I moved to Florida when I was 4, and was immediately enamored with anything UF. When I graduated from UF in 1991, my first job took me out of the state, and my climb up the career ladder had me move to Tennessee in 1996. I expected it to be a 2 year stint.
19 years later, I am still here. This is where I bought a home, the only one my family has known. We live in a great town, suburb of Nashville with good neighborhoods and great schools, good enough to get my oldest daughter into UF. She is a freshman this year. It's really almost perfect.
Listen...my hatred for Clown College and Leghumper U is appropriately at a level so deep, so dark, that you would never speak of it at cocktail parties. Women and children weep. But living here for 19 years has elevated my hatred for UT to similar levels, despite the dominance we've had for most of my years here. Why?
First, that f*cking orange. It's everywhere. Shirts. Hats. Trucks. Hair. Signs. It's just hideous- the putrid, pumpkin shade of orange you only see in those little 4-pack of waxy, useless crayons made in Korea that kids get at sh!tty restaurants. I drive 10 miles to Lowes instead of 1/2 mile to Home Depot just to avoid that.f*cking.orange.
Next, their fans are morons. Not garden variety idiots mind you, but the fat, ugly, smelly, truck-stop hat wearing, cross-eyed, yellow-toothed, spittle when they talk mentally-defective imbeciles. They usually have sh!t all over their face when they eat. The men wear overalls, and the women muumuus. They talk sh!t all year, convinced that this is the year when it turns around to their former glory. I've been flipped off, honked at, and yelled at (in an unintelligible string of grunts) for having a gator plate on my car.
But finally... and really the reason bigger than all others...
That f*cking song.
They play it everywhere. EVERYWHERE! At the grocery store, in the elevators, at the high school games, in the parades, at funerals. It's nails on a chalkboard. You'd think it was the gap-tooth national anthem. The hillbillies stand at attention, with their crossed-eyes staring off in space like a dog hearing a high pitch whistle. I hate that f*cking song. When it comes on, my wife hides all sharp objects for fear that I will jam them into my head in an attempt to burst my eardrums.
My only salvation has been the winning streak that, each year, makes these half-witted prairie dogs go back into their holes to lick their wounds. I need 3 more years. When daughter #2 graduates, we are putting this place in our rear view mirror, never to return. Not because of our town (we will miss it), or our friends (from Vandy), or our home we came to love. No, it's because of that song.
That f*cking song.
I am coming down Saturday for the game, and will leave without a voice, which I'll leave in the stands. If I hear any hint of "that song", hide the pencils.
Go Gators.