Mattingly: Life on road in SEC was never a picnic

When the powers-that-be announced Kentucky would play a NIT game at Memorial Coliseum in Lexington, the first men's game there since March 6, 1976, fans probably didn't realize that the venues of today weren't always the venues of an earlier day.

If road trips are an adventure these days, trips to SEC venues in the 1950s, 1960s, and into the 1970s were really something.

Memorial Coliseum was the pick of the litter. Adolph Rupp and Joe Hall walked its sidelines, and any time an opposing team won, the triumph was a keeper. It seated 10,500 exceptionally loud fans. Kentucky season basketball tickets were jealously guarded, possession often being bitterly contested after deaths or divorces.

There were some magic moments for Tennessee at the Coliseum. There was Dalen Showalter's game-winner in 1960. Tommy Wilson and Tom Hendrix sank key free throws in 1963 and 1967 wins. Ernie Grunfeld and Bernard King led the way to an overtime win in Tennessee's final visit in 1976.

Vanderbilt's Memorial Gym was much smaller many years back, but was still a tough venue for visiting teams. Tennessee lost a hard-fought contest there one year, when a couple of close calls went Vanderbilt's way. "Home cooking," Vol partisans cried.

In the rematch in Knoxville later in the year, Tennessee was ahead and was the recipient of a few close calls. A Vandy guard noted the inconsistent officiating to one of the Vol players. "These are the same officials we had in Nashville," one Vol said.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, oranges came flying from all sections in Memorial Gym, a by-product of Ray Mears' legendary "Long Walk."

At the Mississippi State gym, later named for head coach Babe McCarthy, fans were on top of the court, with the broadcast area located atop one side of the arena. In 1967, a Tennessee legend took shape when Vol Network analyst Lowell Blanchard brought John Ward an orange towel to wrap around his throat to ward off a cold March breeze blowing in from behind the broadcast location. There must have been an open window or door that escaped everyone's detection.

Ward knew a novelty when he saw one. The towel (later blue) stayed part of John's repertoire until he retired 32 years later.

McCarthy rivaled Mears for pulling all kinds of stunts, one of which was putting a dead skunk under Adolph Rupp's chair. He had a great line in 1962 when State knocked off the Wildcats, in the days of Kentucky's All-America forward Cotton Nash.

"I was hoping one of you fellows would ask me how we handled Nash," McCarthy explained afterwards. "My daddy used to have a cotton gin, and I was always good at handling cotton."

In Gainesville, there was Florida Gym, also known as "Alligator Alley," behind the east side of Florida Field. It seated about 5,000.

There always seemed to be something happening away from the playing floor, when the teams were practicing or even during the games, events such as gymnastics, calisthenics, or badminton.

In one 1960s game, Florida defeated the Vols in the final seconds. A fight broke out on the floor, with fans rushing the floor from everywhere. Angry fans overran the Vol Network broadcast location. Ward was stunned, perhaps addled, for a brief moment.

All Blanchard could say was, "Some SOB just knocked Ward out!" That statement resonated into a live microphone back to Knoxville. Ward recalled recovering and saying, "You can't say that on the radio" and went on with the final moments of the broadcast.

Auburn had its Quonset Hut, with seating for about 2,000. With Tennessee winning in 1967, Mears sent his starters to the dressing room just before game's end. They were showered with coins of all types. Without thinking, Widby hurled a handful of the coins back at his tormentors.

At Georgia, in a arena called Woodruff Hall, legend has it Tennessee couldn't get out of its dressing room for the second half because it adjoined the men's room, which was full at the time.

At Alabama, Foster Auditorium, just up the street from Denny Stadium, was no picnic, either. At one end of the playing floor was the door where Gov. George Wallace stood in the early 1960s, eyeball-to-eyeball with Nicholas Katzenbach of the United States Justice Department, when African-American students were attempting to register for classes.

LSU had the Parker Center, sharing the facilities with the Ag School, which made for interesting smells during the games. That wasn't the only problem. At games in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Pete Maravich was on the other side.

The next time someone tells you how tough things are on the road today, tell them there were times they were much tougher.

Tom Mattingly is the author of "The Tennessee Football Vault: The Story of the Tennessee Volunteers, 1891-2006" (2006), to be published in second edition in 2009, and "Tennessee Football: The Peyton Manning Years" (1998). He may be reached at tjmshm@comcast.net. His News Sentinel blog is called "The Vol Historian."