Let all the Bulldog faithful rally behind the men who now wear the red and black with two words, two simple words which express the sentiments of the entire Bulldog Nation: Auburn Sucks.
Ah, it’s nice to watch. The baseball program is imploding. Tony Vitello can barely win a game and people are wondering why he ever left. The most esteemed program for the Hillbillies, if you look at actual championship trophies that darken their double wide trailer that must serve as the athletic association’s offices, is women’s basketball.
Or, at least, it was.
Lady Vols guard and former five-star recruit Jaida Civil has entered the transfer portal, leaving coach Kim Caldwell with ZERO players on the roster.
Civil, one of the top players in the 2025 recruiting class, will enter the portal after just one season on Rocky Top.
— FOX Sports Knoxville (@FOXSportsKnox) April 6, 2026
To add insult to injury, it is rumored that they lost Vitello because AD Danny White did more maneuvering to keep Kim Caldwell than he did to retain their championship baseball coach. Through various press conferences and public appearances, it looks like Caldwell’s concern about it all is next to nothing, idgaf.
It’s getting so bad, people thought that Smokey himself had hit the portal, too.
Honestly, you can’t blame them. Their baseball empire is crumbling and it just got worse with the weekend series with Vanderbilt, which walked Tennessee off not once, not twice, but three times in the series.
I’ll be cheering loudly for Michigan today in hopes that Tennessee is locked out of yet another Final Four, too. And no worries, Hillbillies…you’ll probably have your championship winning coach back next year the way the season is starting off for San Francisco.
Sunday was an absolute smasher of a day, if you are of the mindset that nothing’s better than beating Tennessee, and doing it in the most astoundingly painful way for them. The Diamond Dawgs beat the Vowels 8-7, and opened the SEC conference schedule with a series win. But that’s hardly the best part.
First, the game kicked off with Nolan McGill, the “I Refuse to Sing Rocky Top” kid, throwing out the first pitch. You have to listen to the PA announcement, and the beauty of standing out there on the pitching mound with the whole team of Vols looking on was something rich. Trust me, though, it gets better.
Nolan McGill, the kid who went viral for refusing to sing “Rocky Top,” throws out the first pitch. pic.twitter.com/AI2wFOfK4W
The game was rainy, and the Dawgs found themselves down 5-0 midway through the game. Several three-ups and three-downs, as Tennessee has some guys who can sling it, to their credit.
Georgia finally got the bats going, playing some decent small ball and Tennessee got a 6th score in the 7th to go up again, then this happened.
BRYCE CALLOWAY HOME RUN TO GIVE THE DAWGS THE LEAD 🤯
Georgia was getting some solid pitching out the bullpen, then ran into some issues in the Top of the 9th, with one run scoring. Then, in a manner that is only appropriate for Tennessee, the best part of the game happened. With a runner on and down to their last out, up walks Lawless to play hero.
Dear Lord, after watching Gunner drop a dime to London Humphreys and a missed kick later, this was just about as sweet. What’s sweeter is that Lawless thought he had a sure homerun and was doing quite the bit of grandstanding.
So worried about acting tough for the cameras and hyping up his boys that he never bothered to care about wether that ball was gone or not.
Many of you nailed it, so at least the description was accurate this time around. Yep, it was the game that gave us hope that the new head coach and former offensive coordinator from Florida State was going to be able to turn the program around.
Of course, when they threw the screen pass and scored with under a minute to go, I just threw my hands up and said “there we go”. I always used to say that each week it was Georgia’s job to find a new and inventive manner in which to lose a football game. It felt like a 90s remix, of sorts.
But then it happened, P-44 Haynes. And so started the legend of Mark Richt. Breaking the Tennessee curse was one part of the formula for Richt, the other would be beating Florida. Not quite as successful in that department as Kirby has been, but in 2002 there was another moment that started to make me believe that we weren’t going to be Clemsoning in Athens anymore.
And, for once, we got to see what it was like to witness Hillbilly tears as their hearts were ripped from the hunter orange chests. Glorious.
It was definitely a turn in the right direction. We dropped four games on the season in 2001, to USCe, Auburn, and Florida, and concluded with a loss to Boston College in the Music City Bowl. 2002 would result in a lone loss to Florida and an SEC Championship, and a win over Richt’s mentor against FSU in the Sugar Bowl, which we hadn’t been to since the loss to Penn State to conclude the 1982 season.
I’d also like to point out what a roster of studs we had on the 2001 team, which I had somewhat forgotten until I watched the replay:
RB – Verron Haynes, Musa Smith, and Jasper Sanks
WR – Terrence Edwards, Damien Gary, Fred Gibson, Reggie Brown
TE – Randy McMichael and Benjamin Watson
OL – Jon Stinchcomb, Kevin Breedlove, George Foster, Alex Jackson, Curt McGill
DL – Charles Grant, David Pollack, David Jacobs, Jonathan Sullivan
LB – Boss Bailey, Tony Gilbert, Will Witherspoon
DB – Tim Wansley, Bruce Thornton, Jermaine Phillips, Terreal Bierria, Decory Bryant, Sean Jones
K – Billy Bennett
What a squad of future pros and a great collection of DGDs for Richt to launch his head coaching career.
Every Hillbilly in Knoxville liked the Vols a whole lot
But this Dawg fan who lived among them, did not!
This Dawg fan hated Tennessee! The whole Tennessee season!
Now please don’t ask why, but we all know the reason.
Hating the Hillbillies doesn’t come from a store…
Maybe…hating Hillbillies perhaps means a little bit more.
Congrats to this young gent on his epic refusal to sing that putrid crap, who will be rewarded (again) by throwing out the first pitch to start the series against Tennessee at Foley Field.
Guess who will be throwing out the first pitch in Athens this Sunday for the Georgia vs. Tennessee Baseball game…
Fingers crossed we lay waste to the program that once was Tennessee. It’s been a hoot since 1998 in football…would be a delight to see it happen in basketball and baseball, too.
Tennessee dropped one to Wright State on Sunday, which also is the team that beat the Diamond Dawgs during their opening three game series to start the season. To say the least, the Hillbillies aren’t taking the post-Vitello era in stride. Just peep the comments on this Twix.
Let’s make the pitching clean and feed the trees, the gaps, and sh*t-posting this weekend in Athens.
