Where’s the love, man? Or the hate? Or merely the glorious and glowering animosity that’s usually so prevalent around these parts whenever Georgia-Tennessee weekend arrives? Or, if you prefer, Tennessee-Georgia weekend?
I write this after traveling to Hamilton Place early Wednesday afternoon to seek out a few Volniacs and Dawgs for their thoughts on Saturday afternoon’s Southeastern Conference football showdown scheduled to unfold between Georgia’s famous, fabulous hedges.
Column concepts such as this usually take 30 or 40 minutes of prep time. You find out how UGA and UT garb is selling in officially licensed souvenir shops such as The College Station and the Sports Stop. You interview five or six fans from opposing teams. Finally, you hunker down (sorry for the Bulldog reference, Big Orange Nation) and try to make sense of our town’s border war in, theoretically, 850 words or less.
But not Wednesday. Nearly 90 minutes of roaming Hamilton Place’s wide corridors turned up one sweet but shy senior citizen in a Tennessee sweatshirt who said she didn’t want to be quoted.
And that was it. No red or black-clad Bulldog backers basking in the glow of their No. 5 national ranking. No orange-wrapped Big Orange boosters loyally and defiantly defending their eager underdogs.