I’m a Tennessee football fan. If you are too, you know the struggle.

After an early loss to Duke my junior year at UT, I gave up for the season. Weeks later I watched from my window in Strong Hall—where I’d stayed in to avoid the Alabama game I knew we were going to lose—as a raucous crowd of my fellow students (it looked like all of them, everyone but me) carried a goalpost down Cumberland Avenue. I haven’t missed many games since, though at times it’s been tempting.

I was there for the rise and fall of Phil Fulmer.

I tried hard to like Lane Kiffin until, mercifully, I didn’t have to anymore.

I didn’t make fun of Derek Dooley’s pants.

I seriously considered whether winning “the championship of life”—as Butch Jones put it—was just as good as winning football games.

I watched Jeremy Pruitt’s first press conference and decided it was really okay for someone in a high-profile position with the major university from which I happened to have a communications degree to punctuate every sentence with “aight.”

This new guy, Josh Heupel? I’m all in. Whatever.

A big part of that is not taking Tennessee football super seriously. If we win, it makes my day. If we lose, it’s just a game. (I’ve also learned to love basketball.)

According to the nonpartisan, nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, Tennessee is on the wrong side of 500 for obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, serious mental illness, infant mortality, gun deaths, and opioid overdose deaths. These trends can be reversed with smart policies and robust investment in evidence-based programs.

This isn’t a game; these are people’s lives. Time for a new coaching staff.

Allison
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