I figure the SECr is now just a giant wasteland and frankly this post is just for you peeps anywho, so just dropping this one off on your boards.

Had to come up to TN for a funeral this weekend and my wife is a UT grad, so finally got a chance to visit UT for the first time since I was in undergrad. I have to say, even for a stadium that wasn't full, for really the first half of the game, the UT fans were beyond impressive... I know it's been a shitty run of coaches/luck/et al, but in spite of all that, UT fans came with some borderline electric energy. I like what I saw from Maurer... he's got to grow/develop like any youngster, but I'll be damned if he didn't look 1 billion times better than anything I've seen from Gitmo.

Also, unlike my visits as a youngster, I have to say the UT fans were actually decent.. of course they boo UGA players, calls that don't go their way, etc - like any good opposing fan - but they were polite to me, and my daughter which at this stage of the game is more important to me than how you treat me..

I was surprised by the state of disrepair on the river side of the stadium... but sounds like there's a project in the works for that, so will look forward to seeing how that turns out, as the "pretty side" seemed really well done from the outside. The upper bowl area was definitely every bit as steep as I remembered it, never worried for me, but sometimes had to hang on to the little one a little tighter than I might have otherwise. I did see a drunk UT fan roll a few rows get back in his seat and then do it again, so thankfully some people escorted him out...

I'm looking forward to coming up at least once during basketball season to see a big game where I can actually not actively root against you.