On those too rare autumn moments that his precious time is not consumed by being the Voice of the Tennessee Titans, few citizens of the Volunteer State bleed orange more than Mike Keith.
So this weekend, when Keith said of the 2022 Vols, "When you can score, you've always got a chance," it should just mean more to the Big Orange Nation.
By now all of Big Orange Country knows the significance of the following words: Thursday evening, 7 p.m.
That's when Tennessee begins the school's 131st football season with a visit from Ball State. That's when Neyland Stadium will be rocking. And one of the best traditions in the Southeastern Conference will again be on display when the Vols run through the "T" formed by the Pride of the Southland Marching Band. And the near constant playing and singing of "Rocky Top" will be heard from Morristown to Memphis.
As the incomparable late Voice of the Vols John Ward told his radio audience each season: "It's football time in Tennessee."
Yes, it's too hot.
And too early.
Go back 60 years, and UT's opener was on Sept. 29.
Go back 50 years, and it was Sept. 9.
Now it's Sept. 1, a Thursday evening, a school night, no less, and televised by the SEC Network.
"I just feel like there's a lot more confidence," Keith said prior to Saturday night's exhibition game against the Arizona Cardinals at Nissan Stadium, the Titans' preseason finale. "We know what we've got in (second-year coach) Josh Heupel. (The SEC) is a man's league. A lot of these guys look like they could already play in the NFL. And we're not there yet, certainly not like we were in the 1990s under Phillip Fulmer. But it's been a long time, a long, long time since we've had an offense that's as exciting to watch as this one."
This is the timeless beauty of college football, if not all sports, before the first results of a new season roll in. Everybody can dream. Big dreams. Championship dreams.
Folks in Lexington, Kentucky, can create scenarios in their minds where the Wildcats can reach their first-ever SEC championship game as beasts of the SEC East. They won't. A year from now they'll likely remain one of four SEC schools — along with Ole Miss, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt — to have never reached the league title game.
But after going 10-3 last season for the second time in four years and winning a fourth straight bowl game, the Big Blue technically have a chance, as does A&M in the SEC West.
And who will join two SEC schools in the oblong ball's final four? Ohio State, for one. Then, who? Southern Cal? Clemson? Oklahoma? Who knows?
All we really know for sure after Saturday's mini slate of games is that no matter how nervous or apprehensive you are about the start of your school's season, you can't possibly feel more pain, anger, frustration and downright sports despair than Nebraska's Huskers Nation does right now.
Favored by double figures in most corners against Northwestern, buoyed by the fact that after losing six straight games by single digits to close out the 2021 season there was no way they wouldn't be noticeably better against a Northwestern squad that had also finished 3-9 last fall, the Big Red somehow blew a 28-17 third-quarter lead on their way to a 31-28 loss Saturday in Dublin, Ireland.
Not since the Associated Press poll era began in 1936 has a team lost seven straight games by single digits. Even worse for Huskers coach Scott Frost, his record in single-digit games falls to 5-21.
Some superstitious folks might rightly wonder about the wisdom of playing a Wildcats squad coached by a guy named Pat Fitzgerald in Ireland. Then again, Frost has a copper tone to his hair, so it doesn't get much more Irish than that.
But however much or little the luck of the Irish had to do with this outcome, Frost's coaching seat is now the hottest in the sport, and almost certain to leave him a boiling puddle by season's end if the Nebraska administration doesn't meet him on the tarmac at the Lincoln airport with a pink slip on his return from Ireland, a lá Lane Kiffin's Southern California exit.
None of that has much of anything to do with Tennessee or the rest of the SEC other than the Vols hiring Heupel away from the University of Central Florida seems to be working out a lot better than Nebraska hiring Frost away from UCF.
Which brings us back to Keith and his view of the Vols less than a week from their season opener.
"I know they have a chance," he said, and then, making a comparison to recent years, "That's the difference."
That's a very big difference in Tennessee football and Nebraska football these days.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.