Mark KennedyView other columns by Mark Kennedy
Most books about college football are written by insiders - former players, coaches or sportswriters.
Bob Arnold, a former plant superintendent at the La-Z-Boy furniture factory in Dayton, Tenn., is a lifelong University of Tennessee football enthusiast who has written a book from a fan's point of view.
Arnold's book, "Through Orange Colored Glasses: Memories of a Big Orange Fan," ($18, Amazon or utorange coloredglasses.com) is a collection of reflections and game-day stories: from watching a game in 1968 from a Knoxville tree-top to being stuck in a bathroom at Neyland Stadium during the defining drive of Tennessee's 1998 national championship season.
When Arnold retired from La-Z-Boy several years ago, writing a book was on his bucket list. Taking inventory of his passions, Arnold decided his love of UT football was the right book topic.
Arnold is one of those guys who can feel the hair on his arm stand up when the Volunteer players run through the "T" before home games. He says he was ready for the 2016 campaign the moment the final second ticked off the clock in Tennessee's 45-6 beatdown of Northwestern in the Outback Bowl back on Jan. 1.
"We're back where we're always supposed to be," says Arnold of this year's much-anticipated Vols season. The Associated Press pre-season rankings have the Vols pegged at No. 12.
Arnold says his first memories of UT football are of listening to radio play-by-plays by announcer George Mooney in the 1950s and traveling to Knoxville on Highway 27 on fall Saturdays to attend games with his dad and uncles.
The first Volunteer game Arnold attended was the UT-Alabama game in 1960. The men in orange prevailed that day, 20-7, and after the game, 9-year-old Bob asked his father, "Daddy, when are you going to take me to a big game?" Incredulous, his father informed Bob that the UT-Alabama game is as big as it gets in Southern football.
Arnold attended Tennessee Tech University, but he says he would slip away from the Cookeville, Tenn., campus on Saturdays to travel to Knoxville to watch his Vols play. In 1968, when he was a senior in college, Arnold and several of his buddies went to Knoxville to catch a Tennessee-UCLA game. Scalpers outside the stadium wanted $15 for tickets, however, and Arnold balked.
"There was no way I was paying $15 for a ticket," says Arnold, a future season-ticket holder, who proceeded to climb a tree outside the open end of Neyland Stadium that day in 1968 to watch the game. He could see all but 20 yards of the field, he remembers, but then he had to rely on crowd noise to determine if a team punched the ball into the end zone.
Another memorable story retold in the book comes 20 years later when Arnold left his seat in disgust during a regular-season game at Neyland between the Vols and the Arkansas Razorbacks. Convinced his then-undefeated Vols were about to lose to the Razorbacks in the final seconds of the game, Arnold told his nephew, his companion for the day, "I'm not going to watch us lose. I'll meet you outside at the gate."
Arnold then headed for the restroom. There, he immediately heard a mighty roar that shook the stadium. A man with radio earphones announced that Tennessee had just recovered a fumble, and Arnold charged back out to his seat just in time to see the Vols score the winning touchdown that preserved their undefeated season.
Arnold says his favorite era of Vol football was the late 1990s, when Rhea County product Andy Kelly quarterbacked the Vols to a pair of Southeastern Conference championships. Kelly, a personal friend of Arnold's and now an insurance agent in Dayton, wrote a preface to his book.
Arnold says his wife, Janet, always had her ears open for anyone in the stands at Neyland Stadium who was critical of her hometown favorite, Kelly, and she wasn't shy about giving naysayers a piece of her mind.
"She'd always pick on these guys who were about 6-3, 250 pounds," Arnold says. "I kept telling her, 'Janet, please pick out a smaller guy so I've at least got a chance."
Contact staff writer Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.