At first, the headline in Slate seemed about right: “Tennessee Over Alabama Is Why God Invented College Football.” A dramatic midseason passion play between unbeaten longtime rivals, decided by the absurdly over-the-top score of 52-49 amid wild last-minute fluctuations, the show—especially the ending—was worth an exuberant yahoo!
First of all, Alabama—arrogant, insatiable Alabama, which has played in six of the last seven national championship games, winning three—had lost, a result that certainly delighted a major portion of college football followers. More delicious to the Tennessee crowd, in excess of 100,000 people, was that the home team had ended a 15-year losing streak against much-despised Alabama.
Slate emphasized the significance of the Tennessee upset by declaring that validation in college football comes “from two things: Beating the team you hate the most, and having the time of your life with you friends. That’s what Tennessee provided.”
Except. When it was over, Tennessee students and fans stormed the field, ripped down the goalposts and, overpowering security guards and police, dumped pieces of the posts into the Tennessee River behind the stadium. During the chaos, a county sheriff’s officer was sent to the hospital after being struck in the head by a bottle, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel, which listed dozens of arrests for public intoxication and assault.
David Ubben, writing for The Athletic, chronicled the post-game madness in a lengthy piece that was thoroughly reported—but somehow came to the conclusion that the delinquents’ destructive rumble was “a little piece of heaven,” just an exuberant collecting of big-win souvenirs.
“For at least a few minutes,” Ubben wrote, “traffic laws didn’t exist and vandals were given clemency. All is forgiven on a night like this. And the police can’t hand out 500 jaywalking tickets.”
The Southeastern Conference could—and did—levy a $100,000 fine against the university for the fans’ rampage, yet The Athletic, in a follow-up post, posited that “the fine is completely worth the enthusiastic mayhem of Saturday in Knoxville.”
University president Randy Boyd didn’t exactly reveal himself to be a model of rectitude, either. Victory cigar in hand, Boyd, when asked how much the haywire celebration might cost his school, glibly assured that “it doesn’t matter. We can do this every year.” Sports Illustrated joined the endorsement of hooliganism by calling Boyd’s response “appropriate.”
So, OK: Herewith the fuddy-duddy reaction to Tennessee fans’ neanderthal behavior, starting with how it utterly perverted the definition of poise—”keeping one’s head while all those around you are losing theirs.”
That Tennessee’s gridders had at last knocked off mighty Alabama after 15 consecutive losses—on national television, with possible national-title consequences and maximum style points—was accurately described by Slate as “an exorcism,” and by winning coach Josh Heupel as “college football at its best.” The game itself was undeniably grand theatre, with an on-the-edge-of-your-seat finish. Enormously satisfying for all but Alabama rooters.
But so many in the Tennessee mob lost their moorings in the wake of the winning field goal. It was a form of tribal joy gone wrong, using the occasion of a significant victory as justification for wreaking havoc (and endangering people). It has happened too often in cities whose teams have won the World Series, the Super Bowl or the NBA title, and on campuses when “having the time of your life with your friends” metastasizes into anarchy.
A few years ago, Sports Illustrated cited Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium, the campus and surrounding Knoxville area for providing the best college football weekend experience in the nation.
After the Tennessee-Alabama game, though, you can have that experience.