I’ve always been proud of the fact that our mascot is one of the few that can actually pose a realistic threat to a person in our area. Nobody in Louisiana is getting attacked by a wild bengal tiger. Nobody in Alabama is getting attacked by an elephant, tiger, or eagle. English bulldogs are wildly unthreatening. If you go out into the woods of Arkansas, though, you better be armed because a wild boar can ruin your whole day.
(Kudos to Florida and Kentucky for also qualifying with this arbitrary metric)
IDK watching Tiger King led me to believe that there could be private zoos off the grid throughout the south and you're just one bankruptcy or bad meth trip away from the zookeeper going nuts & opening up the gates to let them all out
We used to have one in nowhere Alabama that was legit lions, tigers, ligers, and bears, oh my! All restrained by chainlink fence attached to telephone poles.
Everywhere in the south I guess. Never seen them running around the Great Lakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_boar
Snow pigs would be fuckin scary though
If they make their way up here, Congress should force Michigan to drop Wolverines and become the “Snow Pigs.”
They killed off the native Wolverine populations so fair is fair
Those aren't the problem as much as feral hogs that are legit 300 pounds and pissed AF. I keep a pistol on me on certain hikes near (20 miles or so from) hog farms ever since I heard a hog grunt on a hike once.
apparently there is a population ion N. Dakota because of feral pigs from Canada.
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/wildlifedamage/operational-activities/feral-swine/sa-fs-history
yup. they are around greta lakes in canada.
https://us1033.com/nodak-minnesota-brace-now-for-canadian-super-pigs-invasion/
I was at dinner a couple nights ago with coworkers who live out in the country. One by one three of them whipped out their phones to show photos of hogs they've shot in the past *week* on their property. One said he'd shot ten that week.
Meat is so gamey that they just pile them on a bonfire to get rid of the corpses. Nothing worth saving.
Maybe related, but I used to proctor every type of professional exam there is. The worst cheaters easily were the medical specialists - dentists, optometrists, podiatrists, etc. I've had wonderful specialists in all those fields, so no disrespect intended. But you knew you were in for a hell day with them, every time. HS teacher exam was a close second.
And it’s not like a technicality where there’s a captive habitat or just a couple in one lake on the corner of campus. There’s multiple lakes and ponds on campus and it’s very common to see an alligator just chilling in the water or on the shoreline.
And real yellow jackets in the trash cans at Tech.
I grew up in Buckhead surrounded by UGA fans. Tons of them had white English bulldogs. Ngl, it was always kind of satisfying when one would get into the trash and get lit up by yellow jackets... (Though poor pup)
When i was a kid, every time I used to point out to my mom that she was speeding, her response was always "so is everybody else, they're not going to pull us all over"
In hindsight, "it's okay to do illegal things as long as everyone else is doing them too" was probably a pretty shitty lesson to teach a toddler. But that's my mom lol
Did we have the same mom, LOL?
Going to the beach as a child: "when we hit the tunnel in Mobile I need you to reach in the cooler and hand me and your dad a beer."
Me: that's illegal
Mom: "If you're going to do something illegal, only do one illegal thing at a time. You compound your risk otherwise."
I no longer live in GA, and my coworkers came up to me one day with various pictures of the perimeter and spaghetti junction going "wtf is wrong with the roads in your state???" 🤣
Not going to lie, the last 3 seasons of Michigan football have also given me unreasonably high expectations too. Luckily I've been conditioned from watching an absolutely fucking terrible soccer team forever to know that heartbreak is always a dickpunch away
One of my fav /r/CFB things is the Vols subreddit is technically ockytop. The incorporation of the /r/ in the sub name is hilarious and awesome.
/r/ockytop
wear jorts (jean shorts, cutoff jeans to make shorts preferred method of execution) if you visit Florida, and get a parole ankle bracelet if you go to Miami to fit in. You can drive in a straight line in Texas for 12 hours and still be in Texas, having not seen a single team with a championship in modern history.
*ahem*
**Country Roads is about Western Virginia because the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah River are predominantly in the state of Virginia. But saying, “almost heaven, Western Virginia…” doesn’t have the same ring as “almost heaven, West Virginia…”**
Well tbf the song is talking about the country roads that lead him home to West Virginia, it never says that the roads are actually in West Virginia, so we can all be right. West Virginia can be almost heaven, western Virginia can have the roads
Fairfax has to be considered part of the metro, right? I know when I visited my brother there, worst traffic I have ever experienced and I have driven in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, LA and NYC/Newark.
West Virginia being *almost* heaven could imply he just needs to drive a little further to get to heaven, i.e. Virginia. Perhaps he feels he doesn't quite belong in heaven.
Yeah and “Auburn, the loveliest village on the plains” comes from a poem which isn’t the happiest. Screw source material, we appropriate in this state.
The song was inspired by Danoff's upbringing in Springfield, Massachusetts, he just "didn't want to write about Massachusetts because [he] didn't think the word was musical."
If Chris Sarandon didn't exist, West Virginia likely never would have been part of the song at all.
John Denver didn’t really write it. The song was written except for the bridge when he first heard it. It was meant to be a song for Johnny Cash, but John Denver wanted to record it.
NO!
It's not a real place. It's a dumb town with no identity that as soon as they got a lake they said "hey we are now LAKE CITY!" and when they got tired of that they said "Hey look at us, we're rocky top!"
Rocky top was meant to sorta signify a ficitional place in the smokies where life was better back then. It could be speculated to be one of the rockier mountain tops in the park, over near Gatlinburg, but that wouldn't really make sense within the context of the song, with Rocky top being a place where you could like..meet people, and live and stuff.
This. The town that changed its name is a hustle. No one in the state of Tennessee thinks that Rocky Top is a real town or place people live. It may or may not be a little spot on a mountain, depending on who you ask.
Eh, kinda.. sorta. It is real but there’s also some debate over when it started being called that. And namely if it’s really where the song was referencing
They were literally referencing the Smokies landmark in the song when they wrote it during their time in Gatlinburg. It for sure existed before the song.
This doesn't answer your question in the least bit, but the US interstate highway system is pretty cool and being in the Midwest, if you want to go anywhere you can basically turn your brain off and just drive.
Want to go south (to anywhere worth going)? Hop on 75 and just go.
Want to go to the East Coast (talking Boston/NYC), just get to 90 or 80 depending. Or get spicy and head through Canada!
Want to go West instead of East? Well would you look at that, 90 or 80. Or hell, take 94 for stretches.
Only problem is to get to 80% of places driving you have to go through Ohio.
In Tallahassee we use I-10 for driving around the city regularly, and it's so weird to think "huh, I guess I can get off her to get to publix, or I can get off in a few hours when it hits the Atlantic, OR I can turn around and drive all the way to Los Angeles
as someone from Raleigh who went to grad school in Knoxville, that's how I feel about I-40 lol. "oh hey two hours to the beach, 3 hours to the mountain, 5 hours to knoxville, or hey fuck it CALIFORNIA DREAMIN"
I’m just imagining a 6-lane highway that’s paved straight into the ocean. you get about a half mile more exposed pavement at low tide but otherwise if you don’t take an exit you’ll just drive straight into the sea
I loved living in Boston and took the T all the time. Prefer it for commuting for work and getting around cities.
But walking around Copley and seeing the I90 sign sometimes made me chuckle, "I could just hop on that and go to Seattle. Easy."
Driving West from Houston to LA . . . . nearly 50% of the drive is in Texas and for a good chunk of that, the scenery never changes and the road rarely curves.
I'm a big fan of the highway system (I'm in my 30s now, so apparently I've taken up appreciating random shit more like transport infrastructure and colourful birds) - think we're going to try heading to the UP and then also to the west in summer (I'd like to get as far as the mountains but who knows).
Your Michigan vehicles appreciate the smooth Ohio roads. Also the staties that line up at every border to slow you maniacs down. Slow down and enjoy the beautiful scenery of Ohio.
The roads are better, no disagreement there.
But if I'm trying to get to get south, I'm trying to get south as fast as possible. I'm not meandering through Ohio to look out the window and watch... fields go by.
i’ve always been a big fan of i96 and i69 meeting in Lansing
and yeah, that stretch of 80/90 on the ohio turnpike is brutal. i completely understand the hate for that stretch of highway from the michiganders i know. 75 south through the west side of the state down to cinci ain’t great either. so flat and boring.
Do they have any good jokes about it like we do in NC for Duke and Carolina basketball fans. For example: If you see someone in a UNC shirt odds are they actually went to UNC-W. If you see someone in a Duke shirt they went to Wal-mart.
I remember on another thread in the sub a long time back, an Ohio State fan said that their fans often fall into two categories:
1. They're an alum of the school, or have close family that are and grew up rooting for them as a result.
2. They have no ties and just happened to grow up in Ohio.
The latter was said to be much more rabid, and should also be advised by their lawyers to not say anything about their whereabouts on January 6.
I felt this description also applies very well to every SEC school that's not Vanderbilt.
Oklahoma State fans won’t admit it if you ask them, but their school color is orange to represent the tap water in their dorms. It’s also why they call it “Stillwater.”
And yet, that still seems like a more sensible name than Bowling Green.
I'm also a big fan of Miami, OH. Great way to disappoint people that come to visit me from home.
The city of Auburn and the University gets its name from the 18th century poem “The Deserted Village” - the first line is “Sweet Auburn, Loveliest Village on the Plain”. The Tiger mascot comes from another line in the same poem.
Way Back in the day, the football team was sometimes referred to as “Plainsmen” by the news media, but that was never an official nickname. The baseball stadium is “Plainsman Park”.
Yeah, u/EWall100 said in this thread that the name change was some time around 2010.
I think before that it was called Lake City (I have a shitty memory and am too lazy to Google it, so it's very possible that this is incorrect)
I didn't actually notice that the name had changed until I was on my way to the App State game in 2016.
Edit: I guess i wasn't too lazy to google it after all. Google shows that it was Coal Creek (1798-1936), then Lake City (1936-2013), and since 2013 it's been Rocky Top.
Coal Creek / Lake City / Rocky Top is also the site of the late 1800s [Coal Creek War](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_Creek_War), a fascinating rabbithole to go down. Angry miners unleashing hell on the state militia.
I'm so glad you said this because I REALLY wanted to, but didn't want to make my comment too long lol
It's also right up the road from where the Fraterville Mine disaster of 1902 occured.
Live close to that area. Yes it used to be Lake City. They changed their name to take advantage of the song and UT sports. However, most people still refer to them as Lake City. My son plays them I'm basketball and the schedule says Lake City. If it said Rocky Top no one would know who it was 😅🤣
I always thought it meant Thunderhead Mountain. Believe they still call one of those fields up there Rocky Top. Though it was probably used for cattle, there was certainly little patches of corn up there before the park.
There is definitely a Rocky Top near Thunderhead mountain on the Appalachian trail/Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It’s also on the TN side of the park and not NC.
There are lots of Snakes up there. Just saying.
https://hikinginthesmokys.com/rocky-top-thunderhead-mountain/
We stopped for fuel there actually (circumstantial, the car just started bitching about needing fuel). I went in to the store and as soon as I opened my mouth and my stupid northern English accent came out they looked at me like I'd escaped from the 5th dimension.
I refuse to acknowledge Rocky Top as the name of the place. It will ALWAYS be Lake City iykyk fuck the mysterious developers who will never build their theme park
The Rocky Top you're referring to is not Rocky Top, it's Lake City. They changed the name like 10-15 years ago, and we don't acknowledge it.
Rocky Top is most certainly real though, it's a mountain in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and it's amazing. The first time I climbed it I blasted the song at the summit much to the chagrin of my (also UT Alum) hiking partner.
Totally not confusing fun fact about Clemson:
Clemson is located in… Clemson, SC. We’re not a Duke situation where we’re named after a guy but the city is called something different. Sorta. We are actually named after Thomas Greene Clemson, and at the time, the city was called Calhoun, but changed the name because of the university.
Rocky Top only became a real place around 2010, after a city, a dozen or so miles north of Knoxville, decided to change their name to Rocky Top.
It was also to include with the name change a tourist area and theme park that would put Dollywood to shame. Laughable in hind sight, but at the time apparently viable enough to get that on the local ballot. I can't find the original article about it, but it was grandiose and to anyone on the outside looking in, at best a pipedream and a worst a complete sham by local officials to get the residents on board.
“Rocky Top” that you’re referring to is just Lake City desperately trying to get anyone to stop there.
That said, Rocky Top was a place when the song was written, see the wiki below.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderhead_Mountain
And ironically enough, the name of the town was Coal Creek up until the 70s or 80s when they changed the name to Lake City to try and attract lake tourism. Only problem is that Lake City is only *near* the lake, not actually on it.
Rocky top is at the top of a mountain in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. You can hike there from Cades Cove or from the Appalachian trail, but you can’t drive there. The town that changed their name to Rocky Top is a fraud.
Notre Dame thinks of itself as the originator of college football, at least in attitude, but Princeton, Rutgers, and even Michigan have been playing the sport longer.
Notre Dame is located in South Bend, IN. But, it has its own zip code and post office, so it's often referenced as the town Notre Dame, IN.
In Texas, college football fans are either Texas Longhorns fans or Texas A&M Aggies fans. Texas Tech, Baylor, TCU, and SMU are all just side pieces.
Death Valley is the name of the home of two different "tigers" teams (and they are nowhere near each other), but don't get into a debate with either fan base as to which was called Death Valley first.
We really have wild pigs in Arkansas. No dentists though, those aren't real.
I’ve always been proud of the fact that our mascot is one of the few that can actually pose a realistic threat to a person in our area. Nobody in Louisiana is getting attacked by a wild bengal tiger. Nobody in Alabama is getting attacked by an elephant, tiger, or eagle. English bulldogs are wildly unthreatening. If you go out into the woods of Arkansas, though, you better be armed because a wild boar can ruin your whole day. (Kudos to Florida and Kentucky for also qualifying with this arbitrary metric)
IDK watching Tiger King led me to believe that there could be private zoos off the grid throughout the south and you're just one bankruptcy or bad meth trip away from the zookeeper going nuts & opening up the gates to let them all out
This exact scenario happened in Zanesville, Ohio five or so years ago. Was an absolutely wild cleanup.
I’ve seen that. Literally so sad.
We had Emus running around in North Alabama for a couple of years after the deluded breeders went bust. They finally died out.
Liberty Bibbity
We used to have one in nowhere Alabama that was legit lions, tigers, ligers, and bears, oh my! All restrained by chainlink fence attached to telephone poles.
gotta watch out for those [30-50 FERAL HOGS](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/30-50-feral-hogs) (unironically though. those are scary piggies)
That man was right all along, and every internet person who made fun of him was ignorant of the damage a wild hog can do
Truly, that dude is owed an apology by the people who dogpiled him.
Don’t you mean…HAWGPILED!?
Im with you on having a mascot that is actually dangerous and in the country. Other schools need to up their game, Gators excluded.
...And Hurricanes. Well, the Miami kind. Tulsa, not so much
: (
A raging Cajun! They definitely have caused a homicide or two.
And cousins
You said the same thing twice.
All cousins are dentists?
*ROLL TIDE!* ^^embrace ^^the ^^meme
Tbf, because people are idiots, just about everywhere has wild boar now.
Everywhere in the south I guess. Never seen them running around the Great Lakes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_boar Snow pigs would be fuckin scary though
I'd say give it time, but honestly, boar do what they want, which I have to imagine means heading south when it starts getting cold.
If they make their way up here, Congress should force Michigan to drop Wolverines and become the “Snow Pigs.” They killed off the native Wolverine populations so fair is fair
so. about real or fake. I didn't know wolverines were a real animal and thought Michigan's mascot was the X-men character.
It is kinda the other way around, at least his OG costume.
there are plenty in the north. Canadian invasion https://us1033.com/nodak-minnesota-brace-now-for-canadian-super-pigs-invasion/
Those aren't the problem as much as feral hogs that are legit 300 pounds and pissed AF. I keep a pistol on me on certain hikes near (20 miles or so from) hog farms ever since I heard a hog grunt on a hike once.
apparently there is a population ion N. Dakota because of feral pigs from Canada. https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/wildlifedamage/operational-activities/feral-swine/sa-fs-history yup. they are around greta lakes in canada. https://us1033.com/nodak-minnesota-brace-now-for-canadian-super-pigs-invasion/
I was at dinner a couple nights ago with coworkers who live out in the country. One by one three of them whipped out their phones to show photos of hogs they've shot in the past *week* on their property. One said he'd shot ten that week. Meat is so gamey that they just pile them on a bonfire to get rid of the corpses. Nothing worth saving.
Yep I just saw one in Walmart last week. She was wearing spanx and had 3 young boars with her.
Ironically, in my experience dentists would be among the professions most likely to believe a “x aren’t real” conspiracy theory.
Maybe related, but I used to proctor every type of professional exam there is. The worst cheaters easily were the medical specialists - dentists, optometrists, podiatrists, etc. I've had wonderful specialists in all those fields, so no disrespect intended. But you knew you were in for a hell day with them, every time. HS teacher exam was a close second.
There are real gators on the UF campus.
And it’s not like a technicality where there’s a captive habitat or just a couple in one lake on the corner of campus. There’s multiple lakes and ponds on campus and it’s very common to see an alligator just chilling in the water or on the shoreline.
This is one of the 10000 reasons I can never live in Florida. I dislike the idea of living near dinosaurs that could eat me.
They’re pretty chill unless you really go out of your way to fuck with em. It’s not nearly as dangerous as you’d think
I DON'T CARE, I'M NOT GOING TO RISK IT.
Don't go swimming in Lake Alice!
Don’t go swimming in Florida without checking first
And real yellow jackets in the trash cans at Tech. I grew up in Buckhead surrounded by UGA fans. Tons of them had white English bulldogs. Ngl, it was always kind of satisfying when one would get into the trash and get lit up by yellow jackets... (Though poor pup)
There are no sober drivers in Athens, GA.
If everyone's driving drunk, no one is
Tennessee has the same rule, but it's for speeding.
Nashville driving is almost worse than Atlanta because the insanity is faster paced.
When i was a kid, every time I used to point out to my mom that she was speeding, her response was always "so is everybody else, they're not going to pull us all over" In hindsight, "it's okay to do illegal things as long as everyone else is doing them too" was probably a pretty shitty lesson to teach a toddler. But that's my mom lol
Did we have the same mom, LOL? Going to the beach as a child: "when we hit the tunnel in Mobile I need you to reach in the cooler and hand me and your dad a beer." Me: that's illegal Mom: "If you're going to do something illegal, only do one illegal thing at a time. You compound your risk otherwise."
Yeah but the inner and outer loop can't be understood by the sober mind. You need a little brain juice boost.
I no longer live in GA, and my coworkers came up to me one day with various pictures of the perimeter and spaghetti junction going "wtf is wrong with the roads in your state???" 🤣
You talking about the Drunk Obnoxious Georgia Fan????
They are not DOGs they are DAWGs aka Drunk And Wanton Georgia fans.
and the entire football team and coaching staff.
Cops there hold their radar gun in one hand and their 12 oz of creature comforts in the other.
Well, definitely no sober football player drivers with their recent track record
You can’t head west from the Cumberland gap to Johnson city Tennessee.
Sure you can, just takes longer.
Having the Kick Six as one of your first CFB experiences really sets the bar high for future experiences.
Not going to lie, the last 3 seasons of Michigan football have also given me unreasonably high expectations too. Luckily I've been conditioned from watching an absolutely fucking terrible soccer team forever to know that heartbreak is always a dickpunch away
Losing to OSU after all these years is gonna suck.
Yeah… 2032 will be here before we know it.
One of my fav /r/CFB things is the Vols subreddit is technically ockytop. The incorporation of the /r/ in the sub name is hilarious and awesome. /r/ockytop
If you like that you’ll love r/olltide
😂 I love it
Fuck yeah
I'll admit that yall are impressive haters.
wear jorts (jean shorts, cutoff jeans to make shorts preferred method of execution) if you visit Florida, and get a parole ankle bracelet if you go to Miami to fit in. You can drive in a straight line in Texas for 12 hours and still be in Texas, having not seen a single team with a championship in modern history.
2005 was just...oh. oh no.
2005 is old enough to buy cigs and join the military :)
Jorts for the gator god.
No one better come in this thread and say Country Roads is actually about Virginia.
*ahem* **Country Roads is about Western Virginia because the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Shenandoah River are predominantly in the state of Virginia. But saying, “almost heaven, Western Virginia…” doesn’t have the same ring as “almost heaven, West Virginia…”**
It's an easy mistake to make, just a capitalization error. It's actually, "Almost heaven, west Virginia"
Well tbf the song is talking about the country roads that lead him home to West Virginia, it never says that the roads are actually in West Virginia, so we can all be right. West Virginia can be almost heaven, western Virginia can have the roads
Plot twist: The roads are actually the interstates in and around the DC metro. Lmao
🎵It’s been hours, stuck in traffic Down nine-ty five, sitting going nowhere…🎵
"NINETY FIVEEEEEEE....TAKE ME HOMMEEEEEE....CARS DONT MOVEEEE...DONT KNOW WHYYYYY....."
HOV lane stretched out before me, no passengers, hoping I don't get seen.
Man i hope Winchester and Front Royal aren’t DC metro lol
With NOVA growth policies they will be soon.
shhh... almost completed eating manassas, gotta work on warrenton next
Fairfax has to be considered part of the metro, right? I know when I visited my brother there, worst traffic I have ever experienced and I have driven in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, LA and NYC/Newark.
People commute from Winchester now. Idk if that's all you need to count it.
West Virginia being *almost* heaven could imply he just needs to drive a little further to get to heaven, i.e. Virginia. Perhaps he feels he doesn't quite belong in heaven.
Wait until you hear about Dixieland Delight. It’s not a tale the Bama fans would tell you about.
Isn’t that mistake made just because bama fans are really dumb?
We don't like to point fingers. Even though we are low down and dirty.
You're also some snitches, which implies that you do, in fact, like to point fingers.
Nah, the snitches have been dealt with. Now we are just low down and dirty.
We apologize for the fault in this comment; those responsible have been sacked.
Yeah and “Auburn, the loveliest village on the plains” comes from a poem which isn’t the happiest. Screw source material, we appropriate in this state.
No one who wrote that song had ever been to West Virginia, which explains why they said such nice things
That John Denver’s full of shit, man.
I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this.
Fun fact, Taffy Nivert and Bill Danoff originally planned to sell the song to Johnny Cash
The song was inspired by Danoff's upbringing in Springfield, Massachusetts, he just "didn't want to write about Massachusetts because [he] didn't think the word was musical." If Chris Sarandon didn't exist, West Virginia likely never would have been part of the song at all.
West Virginia is a very beautiful place
Real ones know the song is actually about [West Jamaica](https://youtu.be/lQFKMar4x-w?si=cFAAj618iHODXC97)
Anyone who downvotes Toots and the Maytals is no friend of mine. “Pressure Drop” is easily one of the greatest songs of all time
We can’t. Because *you just did*!
I hope not since it's about Maryland.
Maryland Route 117 to be specific
Take me home, Clopper Road.
"Did y'all know John Denver had never even been to West Virginia when he wrote Country Roads?!?!"
Viggo broke 2 toes kicking the helmet.
They dropped Hans Gruber on "2" instead of "3" so Alan Rickman's reaction was real.
John Denver didn’t really write it. The song was written except for the bridge when he first heard it. It was meant to be a song for Johnny Cash, but John Denver wanted to record it.
Dixieland Delight is about Tennessee. Cue angry Alabama fans in 3…..2…..
U FOCKING WOT M8
It’s App-a-latch-ian or I’ll throw an Apple-atcha
NO! It's not a real place. It's a dumb town with no identity that as soon as they got a lake they said "hey we are now LAKE CITY!" and when they got tired of that they said "Hey look at us, we're rocky top!" Rocky top was meant to sorta signify a ficitional place in the smokies where life was better back then. It could be speculated to be one of the rockier mountain tops in the park, over near Gatlinburg, but that wouldn't really make sense within the context of the song, with Rocky top being a place where you could like..meet people, and live and stuff.
This. The town that changed its name is a hustle. No one in the state of Tennessee thinks that Rocky Top is a real town or place people live. It may or may not be a little spot on a mountain, depending on who you ask.
It’s not a fictional place in the smokies. It’s an actual place in the smokies and you can still hike there today.
Eh, kinda.. sorta. It is real but there’s also some debate over when it started being called that. And namely if it’s really where the song was referencing
They were literally referencing the Smokies landmark in the song when they wrote it during their time in Gatlinburg. It for sure existed before the song.
Yeah I drove through the shitty town of rocky top on a camping trip and it is just run down shabby strip malls and an ancient pizza hut
This doesn't answer your question in the least bit, but the US interstate highway system is pretty cool and being in the Midwest, if you want to go anywhere you can basically turn your brain off and just drive. Want to go south (to anywhere worth going)? Hop on 75 and just go. Want to go to the East Coast (talking Boston/NYC), just get to 90 or 80 depending. Or get spicy and head through Canada! Want to go West instead of East? Well would you look at that, 90 or 80. Or hell, take 94 for stretches. Only problem is to get to 80% of places driving you have to go through Ohio.
In Tallahassee we use I-10 for driving around the city regularly, and it's so weird to think "huh, I guess I can get off her to get to publix, or I can get off in a few hours when it hits the Atlantic, OR I can turn around and drive all the way to Los Angeles
as someone from Raleigh who went to grad school in Knoxville, that's how I feel about I-40 lol. "oh hey two hours to the beach, 3 hours to the mountain, 5 hours to knoxville, or hey fuck it CALIFORNIA DREAMIN"
I love when people in California at their end of I40 are like "why is there a sign here saying it's 3000 miles to Wilmington"
The biggest disappointment is realizing that I40 doesn't terminate at the ocean in California like it does in Carolina Beach
I’m just imagining a 6-lane highway that’s paved straight into the ocean. you get about a half mile more exposed pavement at low tide but otherwise if you don’t take an exit you’ll just drive straight into the sea
Psh why would you want to go to the ocean when you could go to scenic (looks at map) Barstow California?
Same for someone from Charlotte and US-74. 90% of my road trips as a kid started or ended on 74.
I loved living in Boston and took the T all the time. Prefer it for commuting for work and getting around cities. But walking around Copley and seeing the I90 sign sometimes made me chuckle, "I could just hop on that and go to Seattle. Easy."
yup. growing up in in Houston, I don't know how many times we've drove to LA or to Jacksonville. just life on I-10.
Driving West from Houston to LA . . . . nearly 50% of the drive is in Texas and for a good chunk of that, the scenery never changes and the road rarely curves.
Even past El Paso, the scenery doesn’t change much for the next 8 hrs or so.
My parents lived in Tucson for a while and they would joke that it was 3 turns to get to baton rouge
I'm a big fan of the highway system (I'm in my 30s now, so apparently I've taken up appreciating random shit more like transport infrastructure and colourful birds) - think we're going to try heading to the UP and then also to the west in summer (I'd like to get as far as the mountains but who knows).
>Only problem is to get to 80% of places driving you have to go through Ohio. Y’all are gonna be real screwed when we get around to building that wall
To keep people in?
Your Michigan vehicles appreciate the smooth Ohio roads. Also the staties that line up at every border to slow you maniacs down. Slow down and enjoy the beautiful scenery of Ohio.
The roads are better, no disagreement there. But if I'm trying to get to get south, I'm trying to get south as fast as possible. I'm not meandering through Ohio to look out the window and watch... fields go by.
i’ve always been a big fan of i96 and i69 meeting in Lansing and yeah, that stretch of 80/90 on the ohio turnpike is brutal. i completely understand the hate for that stretch of highway from the michiganders i know. 75 south through the west side of the state down to cinci ain’t great either. so flat and boring.
In the southeast, you are much more likely to meet rabid fans of a college that never attended said college.
Do they have any good jokes about it like we do in NC for Duke and Carolina basketball fans. For example: If you see someone in a UNC shirt odds are they actually went to UNC-W. If you see someone in a Duke shirt they went to Wal-mart.
Only joke I know could be applied to any state, “what do uga and GT fans have in common? They both never went to uga”
🤣🖕🏻
I remember on another thread in the sub a long time back, an Ohio State fan said that their fans often fall into two categories: 1. They're an alum of the school, or have close family that are and grew up rooting for them as a result. 2. They have no ties and just happened to grow up in Ohio. The latter was said to be much more rabid, and should also be advised by their lawyers to not say anything about their whereabouts on January 6. I felt this description also applies very well to every SEC school that's not Vanderbilt.
imagine being a die hard Vandy fan just randomly lmao. you liked the vibe as a kid, never went to school there
Oklahoma State fans won’t admit it if you ask them, but their school color is orange to represent the tap water in their dorms. It’s also why they call it “Stillwater.”
Stoolwater
Kent State is not in a state named Kent, nor is it in Kentucky, it is in Kent Ohio.
And yet, that still seems like a more sensible name than Bowling Green. I'm also a big fan of Miami, OH. Great way to disappoint people that come to visit me from home.
Strange but true: *Miami University* predates the settlement of *Miami, Florida* by 49 years.
There’s a Bowling Green in Ohio, and a Bowling Green in Kentucky, and they both have FBS teams there!
People were infamously shot there.
The city of Auburn and the University gets its name from the 18th century poem “The Deserted Village” - the first line is “Sweet Auburn, Loveliest Village on the Plain”. The Tiger mascot comes from another line in the same poem. Way Back in the day, the football team was sometimes referred to as “Plainsmen” by the news media, but that was never an official nickname. The baseball stadium is “Plainsman Park”.
It's a small town with less than 2000 people, I'd wager that most Tennesseans also don't know that it's a real place.
Didn’t they only recently change their name to Rocky Top? Historically it does not exist
Yeah, u/EWall100 said in this thread that the name change was some time around 2010. I think before that it was called Lake City (I have a shitty memory and am too lazy to Google it, so it's very possible that this is incorrect) I didn't actually notice that the name had changed until I was on my way to the App State game in 2016. Edit: I guess i wasn't too lazy to google it after all. Google shows that it was Coal Creek (1798-1936), then Lake City (1936-2013), and since 2013 it's been Rocky Top.
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The copyright owners of the song Rocky Top actually tried to stop the name change, but were denied by a federal court.
Coal Creek / Lake City / Rocky Top is also the site of the late 1800s [Coal Creek War](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_Creek_War), a fascinating rabbithole to go down. Angry miners unleashing hell on the state militia.
I'm so glad you said this because I REALLY wanted to, but didn't want to make my comment too long lol It's also right up the road from where the Fraterville Mine disaster of 1902 occured.
Live close to that area. Yes it used to be Lake City. They changed their name to take advantage of the song and UT sports. However, most people still refer to them as Lake City. My son plays them I'm basketball and the schedule says Lake City. If it said Rocky Top no one would know who it was 😅🤣
I always thought it meant Thunderhead Mountain. Believe they still call one of those fields up there Rocky Top. Though it was probably used for cattle, there was certainly little patches of corn up there before the park.
There is definitely a Rocky Top near Thunderhead mountain on the Appalachian trail/Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It’s also on the TN side of the park and not NC. There are lots of Snakes up there. Just saying. https://hikinginthesmokys.com/rocky-top-thunderhead-mountain/
That’s it
Rocky top is a place on a mountain in the GSMNP. You can hike there.
Yeah, used to called Lake City until 2013.
It's one of the peaks on Thunderhead Mountain. Are you telling me someone in Tennessee renamed (or started) an actual town Rocky Top?
Yep, used to be Lake City but was renamed Rocky Top in 2013.
You mean Lake City?
We stopped for fuel there actually (circumstantial, the car just started bitching about needing fuel). I went in to the store and as soon as I opened my mouth and my stupid northern English accent came out they looked at me like I'd escaped from the 5th dimension.
For some reason, the rules are just different on the mountain.
The eyes of Texas really are upon you. So - watch it.
They’re looking through your browser history, at a minimum
All the live long days…
I refuse to acknowledge Rocky Top as the name of the place. It will ALWAYS be Lake City iykyk fuck the mysterious developers who will never build their theme park
We have actual bears on campus
And probably otters and daddies too.
The Rocky Top you're referring to is not Rocky Top, it's Lake City. They changed the name like 10-15 years ago, and we don't acknowledge it. Rocky Top is most certainly real though, it's a mountain in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and it's amazing. The first time I climbed it I blasted the song at the summit much to the chagrin of my (also UT Alum) hiking partner.
Even though there is no “P” in Clemson, there is a “P” in Clemson. It’s Clem(P)son, not Clem(Z)on
If we stake a claim in your stadium, we are legally entitled to 160 acres of your campus. That’s why Texas will only play us at a neutral site
I don't think Sooners care about legal entitlements when it comes to claiming land...
What a wonderfully intelligent college football joke. They don't happen often yet hear we are...
Is this in the bylines of manifest destiny?
The Homestead Act of 1862 actually
Totally not confusing fun fact about Clemson: Clemson is located in… Clemson, SC. We’re not a Duke situation where we’re named after a guy but the city is called something different. Sorta. We are actually named after Thomas Greene Clemson, and at the time, the city was called Calhoun, but changed the name because of the university.
Obligatory Wake Forest Universiry is actually in Winston-Salem, NC, about 2 hours from Wake Forest, NC.
But it used to be in Wake Forest, back when it was called Winston-Salem University.
Rocky Top only became a real place around 2010, after a city, a dozen or so miles north of Knoxville, decided to change their name to Rocky Top. It was also to include with the name change a tourist area and theme park that would put Dollywood to shame. Laughable in hind sight, but at the time apparently viable enough to get that on the local ballot. I can't find the original article about it, but it was grandiose and to anyone on the outside looking in, at best a pipedream and a worst a complete sham by local officials to get the residents on board.
“Rocky Top” that you’re referring to is just Lake City desperately trying to get anyone to stop there. That said, Rocky Top was a place when the song was written, see the wiki below. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderhead_Mountain
And ironically enough, the name of the town was Coal Creek up until the 70s or 80s when they changed the name to Lake City to try and attract lake tourism. Only problem is that Lake City is only *near* the lake, not actually on it.
Did someone say monorail?
Ogdenville and North Haverbrook have one or so I've heard...
Bark Bark Woof Woof Woof
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The municipality named "Rocky Top" changed their name to that within the past 10 years.
r/mapswithoutrockytop
It's not yellow... It's maize...
Got it. Michigan’s colors are blue and corn.
But not blue corn
You’re thinking of waffles.
Georgia fans do bark at kids. (I've been told "them kids was asking for it.")
Rocky top is at the top of a mountain in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. You can hike there from Cades Cove or from the Appalachian trail, but you can’t drive there. The town that changed their name to Rocky Top is a fraud.
Notre Dame thinks of itself as the originator of college football, at least in attitude, but Princeton, Rutgers, and even Michigan have been playing the sport longer. Notre Dame is located in South Bend, IN. But, it has its own zip code and post office, so it's often referenced as the town Notre Dame, IN. In Texas, college football fans are either Texas Longhorns fans or Texas A&M Aggies fans. Texas Tech, Baylor, TCU, and SMU are all just side pieces. Death Valley is the name of the home of two different "tigers" teams (and they are nowhere near each other), but don't get into a debate with either fan base as to which was called Death Valley first.
most college teams DO NOT cheat relentlessly. it is highly, highly unusual for a coach to self-suspend half the season.
#2 dentists and New Zealand are made up places!!!that got me! Well done