ClayNation: A painful INT for the ages

You know when you have that sick feeling in your stomach because the worst possible thing that your quarterback can do, he has just done? Welcome to my life with the Tennessee Volunteers, 10 minutes from their first SEC championship since 1998 (which, by the way, feels like about 1898 when you have watched three losses in a row in the Georgia Dome).

Jonathan Zenon celebrates on Clay Travis' expense. (Getty Images)

From my seat in the upper deck I had an excruciatingly perfect angle for the Jonathan Zenon interception that I'm convinced is the worst single play in my life as a UT football fan. Even now, just writing about the play makes me sick to my stomach.

I can think of individual plays that were almost as painful (Jabar Gaffney's "catch" in 2000, Alabama's blocking of the field goal in 1990 that led to a 9-6 loss, Georgia's end of the half fumble return for a touchdown in 2003), but no single play in the history of my UT fandom approaches this Erik Ainge interception, in terms of both importance and awe-inspiring ineptitude.

It's a throw that your four-year starting quarterback absolutely, positively cannot make in the final SEC game of his career. And if he does by chance make a play this bad, then he absolutely, positively has to redeem this mistake by canceling it out with a later brilliant play. Honestly, I'm going to have to take a break before I can write more about the end of this game. It's still too painful.

So I'll start at the beginning, DDT-style for the SEC championship game.

1. Tardio is accompanying me on the trip to the SEC championship game because he's a Kentucky football fan and he wants to see an SEC championship game before he dies. The weekend gets off to a rough start when Tardio shows up at my old house to pick me up for the trip down and our plan to beat the Friday Nashville traffic is defeated.

2. Tardio might be the only man that hates the cold more than I do. About the time we reach Chattanooga, I realize I'm sweating in the passenger seat of his car. This is all the more surprising because I'm wearing a T-shirt, flip-flops and jeans.

"Why's it so hot in here?" I ask.

"It's cold outside," Tardio says. (According to the temperature gauge, it was a bone-chilling 58 degrees outside). To remedy this cold snap, Tardio has the temperature set, and I'm not making this up, at 84 degrees. I didn't even know you could set the heat gauge this high in a car.

3. We agree that our favorite sports talk radio guys are the ones who call and give advice to the team. Is there any less effective way to spend your time (aside from reading this column and not billing your client)? Has any coach in the history of sports ever been riding in his car and heard advice from a caller that he has actually used?

Can you turn the heat up to 84 degrees in your car? (Provided to CBSSports.com)

Yet these people persevere, year after year, tens of thousands of radio hours after tens of thousands of radio hours, giving advice to the team. I wish I had a radio show and could give an online test so that only people with IQs over 120 and people with IQs under 90 could call. I'd e-mail the results to everyone who took the test and not let them know whether they were a genius or an idiot. I wouldn't want any middle tier callers, just geniuses and idiots. This would be radio gold.

4. Our initial departure error is compounded on our first stop somewhere in Dalton, Ga. Tardio buys trail mix with M&M's. Ten minutes later, he says, "Man, I'm not getting any M&M's at all." He takes the trail mix and shakes it hard enough that the roar of the trail mix is deafening inside the car.

He tries to eat again. Ten seconds later he lets out an ear-piercing yelp, "Awww hell," he says, "I bought the one without the M&M's." Then he throws down the trail mix and spends the next 10 minutes cursing under his breath. After he's done cursing he says, "You want some of this trail mix?"