KNOXVILLE - After 70 minutes of lethal lightning and runaway rain, Tennessee and Oregon resumed play at Neyland Stadium on Saturday night, with 102,035 college football fans returning to their soggy seats.
The host Volunteers led the No. 7 Ducks 6-0 at that moment. Big Orange hope and happiness hung as heavily in the air as the humidity.
This is the joy that sometimes comes with starting over, as the Vols are doing for the second time in two seasons under a new coach.
You have that exciting first date - as the Vols did in blowing out UT-Martin a week ago - and you start imagining how great your life is about to become. Big wins. Big celebrations. Big future.
And for a few minutes after the Vols returned to the field against the Ducks, the dream continued. Tennessee led 13-3 less than a minute into the second quarter.
Then, gradually, inexorably, reality set in. The Ducks began to dominate in all phases. A 13-13 halftime score swiftly grew to 27-13 in favor of the visitors from the Left Coast. Then 34-13. Then, finally, 48-13. If lightning knocked out your calculator, that's a 45-0 Oregon run to end the game.
So much for Derek Dooley being the knight in shining armor. So much for beginning an e-mail campaign to former coach Lane Kiffin to tell him how much better off the Vols are without him.
So much for the coaching sins of the past three or four seasons not being visited upon the Vols of 2010.
If you wanted to pick the worst week in Tennessee athletics over the past 25 years, this might be it. Volniacs the world over now know that their basketball coach lied to the NCAA, which will at the very least cost Bruce Pearl $1.5 million in salary and may ultimately cost him his job.
Beyond that, UT athletic director Mike Hamilton has no idea what NCAA fate may ultimately befall the football program thanks to Kiffin's cavalier attitude toward recruiting rules.
This is the UT story that won't go away this autumn. It will frame the background of every football and men's basketball event until the NCAA hands down its penalties on each program, presumably in December.
By that point, should the penalties be heavier than expected, Hamilton might find a pink slip in his stocking, the dreaded "lack of institutional control" label stuck to his program.
Especially since both Pearl and Kiffin were Hamilton's picks and his alone.
But before then there are 10 more football games to play, eight against the SEC, including this Saturday against Florida, which has never lost to UT since Urban Meyer became coach six years ago.
It is not that Tennessee necessarily showed an inability to become a good football team against the Ducks. The Vols led 13-6 less than three minutes from the half, then, in the words of Dooley, "We screwed up the last three minutes of the half in all phases. Bad [personal-foul] penalty. Not very smart. Then we gave up a big play."
But it was still 13-13 at halftime.
Unfortunately for the Vols, Oregon's LaMichael James broke loose for a 72-yard touchdown run less than five minutes into the third quarter. Then Cliff Harris returned an interception 76 yards. Then, early in the fourth quarter, Kenjon Barner took a punt back 80 yards.
Game over.
"We played a real good football team, we didn't handle adversity well and we got run out of the stadium," said a downcast Dooley. "We've got to learn to compete through adversity."
Both on the field and off it now that the NCAA has its eyes on Big Orange Country.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com or (423) 757-6273.