remember our boy Barnes talked about some kids being surprised about NIL offers after they sign their LOI and got to campus.
Doing some research this morning, can anyone tell me how many losses we have at home since we installed the VOLS letters? I’ll hang up and listen.
I remember at the time it was supposedly not compatible with the jumbotron upgrade, but even then people thought that was bullshit.
And when they put the first Jumbotron up, they did some half-assed version of the VOLS letters on top of that Jumbotron that were a white background with orange letters and a black outline when they could have kept the white letter on the orange background. Change for the sake of change.
I was 18 years old and stuck working in retail hell at K-Mart. My uncle was the Assistant Store Manager and always in my ass about everything because he didn't want it to look like he played favorites and he was known to be hard on everyone anyway so it made it even harder. Worked there from the time I was 15 until 19 and that was not fun. Anyway - my saving grace at that time was the fact I worked in the Electronics department. We had the TV's in Electronics. Now, because it was K-Mart and 1998, the only thing the TV's had as far as reception was anything that could be picked up over the air. And inside of this store it barely picked up anything except Fox but you could get CBS on a couple of TV's enough to see what was happening and NBC/ABC were crapshots. I had requested to work early that day with the UT game being late and since I was the youngest in the department that request was declined because everyone wanted the 8-5 shift and no one wanted to do the 1-10 shift. So there I was on a fairly busy Saturday afternoon/evening trying to run Electronics and the register back there and we also had the camera department back there and had the Kodak drop-off so we had hundreds of packs of pictures that would come in and go out daily. I was a salty kid likely sulking about working and cursing every wretched jackass that was in the store instead of being at home watching UT/Arkansas. I couldn't see the TV's from the register area or the camera area so I plugged in a radio and cranked it up so I could at least hear John Ward calling the game when I was out of sight line. I also opened up the most expensive indoor TV antenna we sold and hooked it up to one of the better TV's and actually got a pretty good CBS picture to come in. When the loss prevention guy came by asking what the hell I was doing I told him I would put it back but I thought it would be a good idea to see if these TV's were capable of showing a decently clear picture instead of just mostly snow and it might help sell more of them. He said it doesn't hurt that the UT game may be on one of them huh? He knew what was up but was cool about it and agreed it was a "great" idea if anyone asked him. He was a really good dude. So by the time the game was winding down there were fewer and fewer people in the store so I could stand back there and mostly just watch the game when no customers were needing immediate attention. There were a few other men that were reluctantly in the store and several found their way back to the Electronics department and all were gathered around looking up at the one TV that the game was coming in the best on. When we turned the ball over late all of us were dejected and figured the season was over. A couple of them walked away and back out into the store. A few others stayed and I was still standing there. I can remember exactly where I was standing and just praying that something happen to get us the ball back but felt the game was over. This is the same K-Mart store where 2 years earlier - over the Memphis State debacle - I rammed my hand through a wooden table in the breakroom breaking the table and shooting a bone through my hand for the effort. So I stood there looking at the scar making sure not to hit anything and just being so disappointed. Then Stoerner fumbled. All of us that were back there erupted and were yelling and cheering to the point where some of the other people in the store nearby - and the couple of guys that had left - came rushing over to see what was going on. My uncle was one of the people that came rushing over. He looked at me sternly and said shouldn't you be working? One of the men standing there said the boy IS working. He's showing us all the picture quality on this television. And he's going to keep showing it to us until we say we are done. Uncle looked at me - then them - then decided he wasn't fighting that battle right then and stood there to watch with us. We all celebrated the unlikely win when it came. Then the other men all strolled off to find their wives and my uncle said to me, "you better work doubly hard these next couple of hours to make up for this" but was cool about it otherwise. It was a memory that I'll never forget. I couldn't imagine what being in the stadium would have been like when that fumble happened because I know how much noise a small group of us made in the Greeneville K-Mart that evening.
This uncle wasn't exactly rich on a K-Mart salary. So I was probably more Launchpad (a lovable doofus).
The 98 Arkansas game was the first time I cussed on front of my dad. I yelled "shit" when we turned it over and "he [uck fay]ing fumbled" when Stoerner stumbled
