As a kid, I remember listening to John Ward on the radio. His commentary brought the game alive. I grew up hanging on every word. Even today, I still go back and listen to his calls of Saturday gamedays. My first game (in person) was in 1980 against a loaded Southern Cal team. I sat in the south endzone in the upper deck. We were on the back row under the letter “O” of the V-O-L-S sign where the modern day jumbotron is today. My seat was shaking as people stomped and cheered. The undermanned Vols lost on a last second field goal, but I was sold. That was a proper first game to attend.
My first job was in Knoxville, Tennessee, at a wonderful school that just did things right. God blessed me to work there. I will talk more about that experience in a later post. But ya’ll, one of the many things that they did right was Tennessee Fridays. We all dressed up in orange. Every Friday before Tennessee games, it was like a holiday. Students loved it. Staff loved it. It was just one of the many things that made us family.
During the spring of 1997, my class and I corralled a television, shut the door, and flipped the channel to hear whether Peyton Manning was going to come back to Tennessee for his senior year. State curriculum may be the ultimate authority in education…. -> unless it involves important events on Rocky Top. Manning walked to the podium. My class was silent. I thought it would be tough to turn down going pro, but Peyton is just wired-up differently. So we watched. And we listened. And you know what, that cat announced he was coming back to The University of Tennessee for one more year. My class went freakin’ berserk. It was about then that I wondered if maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. There was no hiding that I wasn’t teaching. But a funny thing happened on the way to getting busted for raising a ruckus, every classroom in that building was also cheering. We were ALL watching it!!!
During my two decades in the classroom since that moment, we have watched UT in NCAA tournament games. We rewatched the TN-Florida 1998 game on Monday morning. I have come to school hoarse for weeks on end after big ballgames cheering in Knoxville. I did have to tone my cheering down before parent-conferences after losing my voice on the eve of five days of consecutive conferences.
It is moments like these that make school fun. It is moments like these that make schools family. Education is founded upon the experiences which students bring with them to class. Want to sell them on college? Then bring the college experience to them. Want to sell them on the idea that school is more than just standardized assessments? Then fire-up Rocky Top after the morning announcements or as you head out the door on Friday afternoon.
Go Big Orange.
