Coach Neyland's Winter Prep
November 26, 2013
The Vanderbilt Commodes flushed Tennessee 14-10 in Knoxville on a frigid day.
I was talking to my new good friend "Sergent" Bob Neyland about the Vols' game and the conditions.
He told me about the time that he wanted to prepare his players for a late November game at Kentucky. The forecast indicated that conditions would be awful, with snow and 20 below wind chills. So on Tennessee's bye week Coach Neyland took his guys up into some nearby snowy mountains. They did all sorts of winter things to get acclimated, including cross-country skiing and even some dog mushing.
Then a sudden storm moved in and the coaches and players were trapped at over 5,000 feet elevation by a blizzard. They had already run out of supplies as they were only planning to be there for the weekend. By Tuesday, starving and weakening, they killed, cooked, and ate most of the sled dogs. Thus fortified, they got a break in the weather and marched back down to the surrounding plains and went to Lexington and laid a whuppin' on the Wildcats.
In honor of the sacrifice of his fellow canines, the one surviving sled dog, who was spared as he was the fastest of the bunch, was made the school's mascot and named "Smokey" after the mountain range where the ordeal took place.
Coach Neyland told me that Smokey was a fan favorite, even as he hobbled around on just three legs. I asked him why he only had three legs. "Beeno, Smokey was such a great dog that we decided we'd eat him one piece at a time".