Seven Saturdays
Tennessee vs. Kennesaw State — Saturday, September 19, Neyland Stadium, 7:45 p.m.
Let's be honest with each other for a second.
Nobody circled this one back in December. You’ll still be catching your breath from Atlanta, and everybody in the state will already have their eyes on the 26th and the Texas Longhorns, the SEC opener, Checker Neyland, coming to Neyland Stadium for the first time. Kennesaw State sits right there in the middle of it.
The outcome of this game isn’t in much jeopardy. Your attention might be. And honestly? That’s fair. Nobody’s going to give you a hard time about it.
Here’s why we’re asking you to care anyway.
The seats that stay empty
I think about the ones who aren’t here anymore.
I’d bet you do too. Most of us have a grandfather, a dad, an uncle, a neighbor, somebody we sat beside for years, who would give absolutely anything for one more Saturday in Neyland Stadium. Not a big one. Just one.
And here’s the thing — they wouldn’t have asked who we were playing. It wouldn’t have crossed their mind to ask. The opponent was never the point.
They’d want the whole thing. The Vol Walk. The Pride’s salute to the Hill. That first rendition of Rocky Top that somehow feels like the first time you’ve ever heard it, every single time, no matter how many hundreds of times you’ve heard it before. The drum major’s first high kick. The way the Pride of the Southland enters that field, four hundred strong now, the largest it’s ever been in a hundred and fifty years of doing this and they all move like one, and something in your chest goes tight and you remember you’re proud to be from here.
They’d want the small stuff too, because the small stuff is most of it. The people you’ve sat next to for a decade whose last name you may or may not actually know. The same parking spot (or maybe a new one now). The Smokey dog you get every game whether you’re hungry or not.
Everybody’s list is different. Everybody has one.
Voices we don’t get back
Do you ever catch yourself wishing you could hear Bobby Denton say “It’s Football Time in Tennessee” one more time?
Forty-eight years he did that. The longest run of anybody in the country. Five words, and a hundred thousand people came out of their seats.
Or do you wonder how John Ward would have called that field goal against Alabama? What he would have found in that moment, the way he always found it, the words nobody else would have thought of?
We don’t get those back. That’s the whole point.
What we do get is right now is a Saturday night in September, in that stadium, while the people we love are still sitting next to us.
And for what it’s worth, this isn’t a nothing game
A few things about September 19 that might not be on your radar:
It’s a night game. 7:45 kickoff on SEC Network. There has never in the history of the sport been such a thing as a throwaway night game at Neyland Stadium. The sun goes down behind the upper deck, the lights come up, the river fills in, and it doesn’t matter one bit who’s on the other sideline. You know exactly what that feels like.
It’s Salute to Service weekend. This is the one Saturday every season that Tennessee sets aside to honor service members, veterans and their families.
And the guy on the other sideline is one of ours. Jerry Mack coached our running backs. He’s now taken Kennesaw State from 2-10 to 10-3 and a Conference USA championship in the program’s second year at the FBS level. That’s not a cupcake, that’s a coach. Give the man his due when they come out of that tunnel.
Seven
There are seven guaranteed Saturdays in Neyland Stadium this fall. Seven.
Furman. Kennesaw State. Texas. Auburn. Alabama. Kentucky. LSU.
That’s it. That’s the whole list. Some years you get an eighth if things break right, but seven is what’s promised, and the season goes faster than you’d believe possible. It always does. You blink at the Furman game and it’s suddenly cold and Vanderbilt week and you’re wondering where it all went.
The days are slow and the years are fast.
So take none of them for granted. Not the Texas game, and not this one.
The Big Orange fans who aren’t here anymore would tell us the same thing, and they’d probably be a little annoyed that we needed reminding.
See you on the 19th.