Tuesday, September 27, 2005 12:04 PM
ryanseals
A good reason to wake up at 3 in the morn
My voice is shot, my heart is still pumping, and my hair is halfway
pulled out ... but four hours later, after the Tennessee victory in
Death Valley, I would have to say that I am the happiest person in
Iraq.
I made it to the TV room a little bit late and missed the kickoff of
the UT/LSU game, which was originally supposed to be played on Saturday
(Saturday night for me). I didn't really miss anything, besides seeing
Erik Ainge fumble the ball and LSU getting their first touchdown. By
half time, down 21-0 after another huge Ainge blunder (3-yard INT for a
TD) on a horrible horrible decision to fling the ball out of the end
zone, I was pretty mad that I had wasted my time getting up so early to
see my team play like crap.
Then .... something amazing happened .... a Clausen .... one Rick
Clausen I should say ... actually played smart football. I've always
hated the Clausens because Casey was extremely overrated while he was
at UT and was extremely arrogant. But Rick Clausen was able to stick a
boot in the ass of our offense and brought us back from the dead, and
we scored 17 points in the 4th quarter to put the game into overtime.
By this time my voice was shot, and so was that of the other
40-some-odd Tennessee Vol faithful that decided to stick with our team
after a horrible first-half performance. None of them left ... we
stuck it out and kept hope ... little hope ... but we kept it, and it
paid off!
Then we went into overtime ...LSU field goal and TN touchdown on a
3rd and 1 play for the 30-27 OT win. Unbelievable, and it has to go
down as one of the greatest TN comebacks of all time! We've still got a
lot to work to do on offense (cough, fire Randy Sanders), but this team
has heart. They didn't give up when the world was against them ... and
that's something you can't coach.
The win made me think of a new project that I'm going to do as a
hobby when I get back home, a new blog. I created the Vol Press Box (www.volpressbox.blogspot.com)
web site this morning and I'm going to work on it in my free time when
I get back home. I hope to have it up and running fully for the second
half of the basketball season in January and in time for Vol baseball
in the spring. I'm hoping to get a lot of graphics and make it into a
very nice looking Web site.
No fear though. We plan on keeping this site up and running for a
while after I get home from my deployment. It has been something that
has really kept Christy occupied, and we've both loved doing it. Plus,
we've met tons of good people online who have been through the same
thing we have, and it's always nice to help out in any way that we can.
GO VOLS!!!!
- Ryan
P.S. This Pat Forde column on the game is a MUST READ.