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I'm prepared to acknowledge that the University of Tennessee is never going to win an SEC tournament during my lifetime. It's just not going to happen.
I was on the road Friday, listening on the radio as UT squeaked out a win over South Carolina (a team the Vols had twice beaten by a combined 57 points, most recently five days earlier by 33). Mercifully, UT found a way to win. This meant that the Vols advanced to the semifinals for the first time since 1991. Seriously, 1991. Futility like this in the conference tournament is almost impossible to manage.
On Saturday, thanks to the tornado striking the Georgia Dome (which will be discussed below), UT's 11:30 a.m. CT tip-off against Arkansas was moved to the evening, placing the second half squarely within a wedding I was attending. That is karmic justice for me writing about weddings conflicting with sporting events in the Friday mailbag.
But before we get to the wedding experience, please tell me you guys were watching JP/LF/Raycom's coverage when the tornado struck. Please. It was superb. My favorite four things from the coverage:
1. Did Tim Brando think the tornado sounded like a locomotive or not? Because I'm not sure. Also, I believe he set a world record for use of the phrase "tornadic activity."
2. How about when they rolled the tape so we could hear the locomotive sound and you couldn't hear anything but the regular sounds from the game? And then they kept showing it over and over again and talking about how loud the locomotive sound was.
I called my wife in to listen for the locomotive after turning the volume up to an ear-splitting level and she said, "It just sounds crappy like it always sounds crappy." Yep, a tornado struck the building where JP/LF/Raycom had all their cameras, sound equipment and the like, and you couldn't even hear it on their mics.
3. Sideline reporter Dave Baker relays a report from the meteorologist at his Lexington, Ky., television station. Where did this meteorologist graduate from? Mississippi State! At this point things were literally turning into a perfect ClayNation storm. I'm not going to lie: I thought the next footage was going to be of a Florida cheerleader with bingo wings holding up a pink dolphin while some guy with 'Bama Bangs did the ClayNation hand sign behind her.
4. Was it wrong of me to wish that Dave Rowe was doing this game? I kept picturing Rowe at home punching his couch as hard as he could while saying to himself over and over again, "I can't believe it!" What's the over/under on the number of times Rowe references tornadic activity in the 2008 football season?
OK, here goes with the wedding.
1. I insist we stay as long as we possibly can before leaving for the wedding. This gets us to the under 12-minute timeout. I listen on the radio as we drive there, cursing Jordan Howell and upsetting my wife in the process.
2. When we enter the church I talk to one of the groomsman and give him an update. UT is leading by 9 with about nine minutes to play. "We're up 9," I say. Groomsman: "I know. We've got whiskey and a big screen in the basement. We're going to hell."
3. Just before I go into the wedding I text Junaid to remind him to send me frequent text updates. The first one arrives with six minutes remaining. Somehow the game is suddenly tied. I start to get very nervous. And not just because I'm sitting in a church.
