GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- I had the best seats of my life for the worst beating in my life as a Tennessee football fan. Which was sort of like getting the password to a free porn site and then finding out your daughter is an employee. Only worse. Much worse. Being a visitor to a football stadium and watching your team get stomped is one of the worst experiences of fandom. Nothing compares to it.
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| View of the field from Clay's seat. (Provided to CBSSports.com) |
Watching your team lose from your own couch is about 100,000 percent better.
Road losses are horrible in a way that only those who have experienced them can understand. It's loud, you are being taunted incessantly, the opposing team's band never stops playing, and the game seems like it lasts longer than a Florida girl's snack breaks. It's unbearable. Especially because it will probably make you remember back in the olden days when your team was actually good. And not, you know, 15-12 in the past 27 games.
Now that Cal and Florida have scored a combined 104 points on my Vols, I'm starting to think the Dixieland Delight book tour games featuring UT are cursed. I'm wracking my brain trying to think what football deity I could have wronged. Then came Sept. 15 and my world came undone.
Remember that book about that Alexander kid and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day? That's what my Saturday in Gainesville was like, only minus the fear of the impending move to Australia.
Ergo, I bring you the first ever DDT beat-down, full of very bad things that happened to me in Gainesville this weekend spliced with actual text messages received from my UF friend Neville, which I had to read during the beat-down. Like all UF fans, Neville is known for his gracious manners and humble acceptance of victory:
1. We park on University Avenue around 27th Street and walk about a mile up to a friendly tailgate. Along the way I am constantly taunted by Gator students sitting outside on their porches, on their party buses and on rock walls. It's a veritable gauntlet.
One Gator grad is standing in the center of the road mooning UT fans who are driving by in cars. Several others have megaphones and are yelling at every opposing fan as they pass. By the time I get to our tailgate, I'm greeted by a yell, "Hey UT sucks," and I don't even realize it's a friendly taunt from the people we're meeting.
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| Brian Grogan, Kumar and Clay Travis. (Provided to CBSSports.com) |
Also, during my Gainesville Wal-Mart book signing, one of the managers comes by, picks up the DDT book, looks at the picture of Kumar posed beside the Tickle Me Elmo dolls and says, "You tried to scalp these? We couldn't even give them away last year."
3. Neville's taunting texts begin just before the game: "Do you understand how good he (Tebow) is?"
4. Orson Swindle from EDSBS.com is wearing a Gator Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned to mid-navel and rocking abundant chest hair. I bet him $10 that he is wrong that the Gators will block a punt on us. Instead I guarantee that Brandon James will return a punt for a touchdown. Then we enter the stadium and on the first UT punt of the game, Brandon James returns it for a touchdown.
