By Tom Mattingly
Over the years, there have been a number of memorable excursions en route to telling the story behind Tennessee Vol athletics. These trips have involved venues across the width and breadth of the Volunteer State and beyond. They have proven to be worth the effort to get to each of them.
When SID personnel were traveling anywhere near Exit 238 on I-40 near Lebanon with Haywood Harris, Haywood would plead to whoever was driving to stop and share the culinary delights at the Sunset Family Restaurant on U. S. 231. It’s gone now, but it provided special memories as well as home cooked meals and sumptuous desserts.
Haywood and Bud Ford and many others have also been part of the excitement over the years not only producing the media guide, but also trying to get the record book, as it’s known now, into as many hands as possible.
There were several stories in Tennessee media recently about this year’s version of the Big Orange Caravan. It was once referred to as a “friends-raising campaign,” which also included more than a little cold, hard cash funneled into UTAD coffers from the festivities.
The trip also included late night poker games involving various staff members. Phillip Fulmer won a modest size pot one night from a junior staffer and was told, “The pen is mightier than the sword.” His response was: “How much did you lose?” No money exchanged hands, but it was a good question.
On the Caravan, there was a golf event in the afternoon and a program featuring whatever coaches were available that evening.
Former basketball coach Kevin O’Neill was always a hoot on the Caravan. “Bulldog,” as he was known, didn’t play golf, actually loathing the sport. He would sit in the clubhouse, cellphone in hand, going through his address book, seeing who he could talk to in order to help pass the time.
Kevin’s side of the conversation was always intriguing, often turning the air blue. You always had to wonder what the folks on the other end might have thought.
Kevin checked in with his office one afternoon and spent time making sure everything was running smoothly in his absence. Everything was going well until one of his aides indicated a problem with filling a date in the December hoops schedule.
Kevin got a little exercised when he heard no one apparently wanted to play in Knoxville for whatever reason on that date and finally responded in a moment of pique that extended into apparent rage.
Kevin did not suffer fools lightly and let it be known the scheduling problem could easily be solved by calling “Book ‘em and Cook ‘em,” coaching jargon for Bethune-Cookman University.
Just when you thought he might stroke out from these high level discussions, he would turn off the phone and come back calmly and rationally to the previous conversation, as if nothing had happened and continue whatever discussion had been taking place.
Haywood had a unique perspective from his experience trying to get a post-game statement from the Vol coach. It wasn’t too long into O’Neill’s tenure that Haywood seemed exasperated that Kevin never really discussed the game on his show on the Vol Network, choosing instead to offer all sorts of free association and advice, unsolicited, to anybody listening.
Many Vol fans might not have heard the game broadcast, but tuned in to hear O’Neill’s “take” on everything connected to the game, except perhaps the game itself. Haywood did work things out and always seemed to get passable comments from the Vol head coach.
There are many wonderful memories of riding throughout the state of Tennessee on Fred Waggoner’s motor home, setting up interviews with coaches at numerous esoteric sites, and otherwise marveling at the way the Tennessee fan base loves the Volunteers.
There’s also a for-sure memory of raised voices at one Caravan stop in the early 1990s in which two former Vol football teammates, both now deceased, got in a major brouhaha over happenings within the football program. It wasn’t pretty, and it foreshadowed events taking place in future months.
Mitch Barnhart was present on several trips, and, when he ended up as AD at Kentucky, here came the Big Blue Caravan to Knoxville and locales across the Commonwealth. The same things happened with the NFL franchise from carefully selected areas of the mid-state. It didn’t take long for a Titans Caravan to become a fixture on the local sports scene. For a while, at least.
The Caravan was called the “rubber chicken circuit” for a reason. Even so, it wasn’t a bad way to spend a spring or summer evening. That’s unless, of course, you were present at an event nearly every afternoon and evening in the same week.
That makes you prone to repeat that famous mantra you can almost say in your sleep. “It’s great to be a Tennessee Vol… It’s great to be a Tennessee Vol.”
And, as we all know, it really is… even after all these years and all those road trips.
