The Tennessee Vols fan base is arguably the best in all of college sports.
But while the majority of the Big Orange faithful are passionate and loyal fans who support the program no matter what, there’s a small subset of the fan base, deemed “nega-Vols” by many, that seemingly live to be miserable.
You know who I’m talking about — the fire everyone crowd. The fans who tweet negative things at players after a tough game. Every fan base has that group of fans. And that small group of fans is almost always the loudest portion of the fan base.
Tennessee baseball coach Tony Vitello had some thoughts this week on fans who like to spew negativity and boo coaches and players.
“You’re either on the team or you’re not,” said Vitello during an appearance on The Tony Basilio Show. “Yeah, there’s frustration. And I guess there’s a situation where you could boo, which I don’t think ever makes sense. I mean, there’s no play you could come up with in your head for our fans to boo on Friday night against Kentucky (in the Sweet 16). It just doesn’t exist in my mind. Either everyone’s on board with Zakai (Zeigler), that’s our guy, or not.
“You either want to wear orange or not. If you’re not, then just wear a neutral color and then bark out stuff like, ‘man you guys didn’t show up’ or whatever it might be. Otherwise, if you’re going to do that (boo), then when (Drew) Gilbert hits a home run, you don’t get to celebrate. You can’t pick and choose. Obviously you can, but I’m just saying by the principles I learned from being around my dad, to pick and choose, makes you a front runner. And that’s not a category I’d want one of our players to be in, I know that.”
There’s a lot of Vols fans that love to Monday morning quarterback every decision that’s made by a coach at Tennessee. And I get it — that’s part of the fan experience. But there’s never been a coach or player in the history of any sport that’s batted 1.000 on every single decision. Sports, much like life, is full of ups-and-downs. And that’s what makes sports so compelling. Like Jason Lee says in Vanilla Sky, the sweet isn’t as sweet without the bitter.
