OK, I felt compelled to write this. My husband and I went to the game this weekend in knoxville, and had quite a different experience than we were expecting. This was our first ever away game and had heard all the horror stories about those rotten UT fans and how they treat UF Fans. We woke up on friday and went to breakfast of course wearing every stitch of orange and blue we could find and surprisingly...no comments made at all. Then about 2pm we decided to start the tailgate. While driving down Kingston Pike we found a bar called Rays ESG. The side of the building was painted in the orange and white checkerboard, they had UT flags everywhere, and even a tank painted vols orange in the parking lot...seriously a military tank. Being the proud gators we are it seemed like the perfect spot. We walked in and immediately the owner came up to us and thanked us for being there and told us that we were welcome and informed us that despite the decor, one of the owners is a gator. We stayed there untill 1am just having a blast. We were treated so great by all the UT fans, of couse there were jabs now and then but all around just a great experience. Fortunately that same experince followed us untill be left knoxville. The people were warm, true, UT fans that just loved their team as much as we did and treated the opposing fans with great respect...we were really surprised. Now, we didnt hang around campus with the exception of gameday so we werent with the college crowd and maybe that was the difference, or maybe it was because they havent beat us in a few years...who knows. The game was awesome of course and we had a blast in knoxville. I highly reccommend anyone attending this game and ignoring all the horror stories. By they way high five to the UF alumni for putting on a great pregamne tailgate.
SLTGATOR
SLTGATOR
