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"It's time," as John Ward said 10 years ago, time for the excitement of Tennessee football taking center stage at Neyland Stadium next Saturday afternoon as the Vols make their 2008 home debut against the UAB.

There's always something special about seeing the orange and white on the gridiron that nothing can take away, not even a loss in Pasadena that had Vol fans on the edge of their seats sometime into early last Tuesday morning. Tennessee fans live and die with each game, truly the lifeblood of the program. The highs are high and the lows are low, but the fans are there regardless, wherever "there" is, every time out, night or day, rain or shine.

They do what they have to do to those precious pasteboards, their tickets into Neyland Stadium. Big Orange football is an event, a happening, something that unifies "Tennessee people" of all ages and backgrounds. Neyland Stadium is located in the heart of campus, with all the accoutrements of college life - libraries, the student center, academic buildings, and the "Hallowed Hill," as Mary Fleming Meek so wonderfully described it - in full view.

The campus area takes on a life of its own from Friday through the end of the game Saturday. There's a sea of orange as far as the eye can see. There's the "Vol Walk," the "Salute to the Hill," and the seeming chaos that occurs when more than 100,000 people descend on the stadium area.

There's the first appearance of the "Pride of the Southland Marching Band" in its signature pre-game show.

There's absolutely a different feeling about college football, particularly in Knoxville, from any other version. The tenor of the times on a football Saturday might even impress the late John Gunther, who apparently delighted in skewering Knoxville in his late 1940s book "Inside America," calling it the "ugliest city I ever saw in America."

Fans bring a unique perspective to the games. They might have watched their team play from their formative years and made a decision early on about their allegiance. Later on, they might have attended the games with their future spouse. They wouldn't dream of rooting for any other team, despite the occasional ups and downs every team experiences.

The talk shows, specifically Tony Basilio's "Voice of the Common Fan," are awash with the passion the college game engenders. (Any show with someone named "Beano" as a co-host has to be worth a listen.) The shows are often over-the-top, but if they weren't, they wouldn't be so fascinating.

Fans might have followed the players from their earliest days, from the sandlots to the local recreation leagues (the NCAA, in its infinite wisdom, calls that a "pre-existing relationship") and on through high school. Many times, fans also know instinctively about a player in Hartsville, Elizabethton, Cookeville, or Trenton, wherever games are played, who, "no one knows about, but he's just a 15-year-old sophomore, and no one can tackle him." More often than not, they're right.

Vol fans take this aspect of the game seriously. After the game, by the time the coaches' shows and videotaped replays have aired, and newspapers and Internet reports have been thoroughly perused, it might be the middle of Sunday afternoon, maybe later, when everyone gets calmed down. Then it's time to do it again.

Many times over the years, more than 10,000 opposing fans, from Alabama, Georgia, and/or Auburn, for example, showed up at Neyland Stadium. On the flip side, there have been times at least that many Tennessee fans showed up at an opposing venue. Try as you might, you find precious few fans following their team on the road in the NFL.

When the game is in the balance and an SEC venue is rapidly coming apart at the seams in the fourth quarter, with fight songs piercing the rapidly darkening skies, it's intoxicating. Fans remember the games from the past for that very reason. It doesn't take much to get the memory banks stirred and an occasional argument started.

Vol fans have made the treks to Hawaii, South Bend, Pasadena, Boston, and other faraway venues without blinking, and consider the nearer trips to Birmingham, Athens, Gainesville, Baton Rouge, Lexington, Nashville, and others to be second nature. There are those magic moments when the team plane lands from a big, maybe unexpected, road victory, and Vol fans line Alcoa Highway or show up at Gibbs Hall to welcome their heroes home, regardless of the time.

Here's a piece of advice. Find the tickets, get the binoculars, and work on the menu for the tailgate. It's big-time college football, and everything has to be planned to the last detail. Don't put it off. The first game of the season is imminent. You've waited long enough. The time is nigh.

Tom Mattingly is the author of "Tennessee Football: The Peyton Manning Years" (1998) and "The Tennessee Vault: The History of the Tennessee Volunteers, 1891-2006" (2006), to come out in second edition in 2009. He has closely watched the Vols since the Mississippi State game Oct. 5, 1957. He may be reached at tjmshm@comcast.net. His News Sentinel blog is called "The Vol Historian."

© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.