It’s as if the Tennessee Volunteers’ fan club has a new chapter this week, based in the Georgia football team’s locker room.
The Bulldogs are rooting hard for a Tennessee victory over Missouri on Saturday night in Knoxville because that would clinch a berth in the SEC Championship game for Georgia.
“We’re all Vols fans this week,” UGA quarterback Hutson Mason said.
“I’ll probably just paint a ‘T’ somewhere and run through it or something like that,” wide receiver Michael Bennett said.
“I’ll probably be singing good ol’ Rocky Top,” defensive end Sterling Bailey said.
Georgia has completed its SEC schedule with a 6-2 league record, which trails Eastern Division leader Missouri’s 5-1. But if Missouri loses at Tennessee — or at home against Arkansas on Nov. 28 — the Bulldogs would advance to the Georgia Dome for the SEC title game by virtue of their Oct. 11 win at Missouri.
Conveniently, the Tennessee-Missouri game kicks off on ESPN at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, long after Georgia’s noon game against Charleston Southern ends.
“I’ll hopefully be settled in my lounge chair and cheering for the Vols,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “Whether or not I wear orange is still up in the air.”
Later, this occurred to Richt: “The last time I wore orange was at (Miami) back in ’82” — his senior year as a Miami Hurricanes backup quarterback.
In truth, Richt said, he’ll probably watch the Tennesssee-Missouri game in pajamas. He said he has a lot of them because PJs are a Christmas Eve gift tradition in the Richt household —but none in orange.
“If we have a noon game ever, I look forward to getting home when it’s all done, doing what I’ve got to do, getting in the shower, putting my PJs on, sitting on the lounger and just watching college football,” Richt said. “I am a big college football fan, and I enjoy it, whether there is something at stake for Georgia or not.”
The stakes will be so high Saturday night — potentially Georgia’s third SEC Championship game appearance in four years — that the Bulldogs have adjusted easily to their temporary role as Vols fans.
“It’s kind of cool to be a fan of some other team,” Bennett said. “It’s going to be like being a regular college football fan.”
Bennett noted that he and Tennessee quarterback Joshua Dobbs attended Alpharetta High, albeit three years apart. Mason noted that his uncle graduated from Tennessee’s dental school. Roommates Bennett and Mason plan to watch the Tennessee-Missouri game together.
Georgia linebacker Amarlo Herrera will root for the Vols, too — but without watching.
“I’ll look at the score on my app. But, nah, I don’t have interest in watching it,” Herrera said. “The two teams playing, I don’t want to see them play. We’ve already played them.”
Georgia defeated Tennessee 35-32 and, two weeks later, routed Missouri 34-0.
The Bulldogs would like to think those comparative scores suggest a Tennessee edge over Missouri, but they know there has been no such predictability to SEC East results this season.
“It’ll be interesting to see,” Mason said. “I think Tennessee is playing their best football this year, and (Dobbs) seems like he’s really kind of given an extra spark to their offense. He’s fun to watch, too.
“I think it’ll be a really good matchup. That’s a tough place (for a visitor) to play at night.”
The game would be of no importance to Georgia if the Bulldogs had beaten Florida on Nov. 1. If they had, last week’s 34-7 victory over Auburn would have clinched the SEC East title. But the Bulldogs’ 38-20 loss to Florida leaves them in need of help from someone else in order to win the division.
“We won as many games as we could,” Bennett said, “and now it’s just really up to luck and kind of fate to see what happens.”
“We don’t like depending on someone else as far as our destiny,” Bailey said, “but sometimes that’s just the way things go.”
So Bailey will do whatever he can vocally to support Tennessee on Saturday night. He admits to not yet knowing all the words to “Rocky Top,” the Vols’ unofficial fight song, “but hopefully before then I’ll learn them.”
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