When the University of Tennessee’s 118th football season kicks off one week from today against Utah State, an old argument may well resurface about which opponent Volunteers fans hate most – Alabama, which owns seven straight wins over UT, or Florida, which has won nine in a row over the Big Orange.
(Side note: Let Vanderbilt stretch its current two-game streak against Tennessee to three or four and it might give both the Crimson Tide and Gators a run for their money.)
But Athens (Tenn.) Area Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Rob Preston says there should be no discussion about which Vols foe makes the Big Orange Nation angriest. It’s the Tide. And there’s no runner-up.
In case you’ve forgotten — and it seems most UT folks haven’t — Preston’s the guy who brought Bama boss Nick Saban to his Chamber’s annual fundraiser in the late spring of 2013, just after the Tide had won their third national championship in four years.
“I got 500 to 600 emails, and most of them were pretty brutal,” Preston recalled Friday. “There were so many angry fans and so much reported about it that Saban’s secretary called me three months before the event to ask me, ‘Is this going to be safe?’ I told her, ‘He doesn’t have anything to worry about. They’re going to be aiming at me.'”