Former Tennessee quarterback and current 99.1 The Sports Animal host Erik Ainge caused a stir on Twitter earlier this week when he said Georgia’s Sanford Stadium is “not that loud and definitely not intimidating” before the #3 Bulldogs host the #1 Tennessee Volunteers Saturday.
Ainge appeared on The Morning Show with John and Hugh on 92.9 The Game in Atlanta to discuss and defend his tweet.
“I was just talking with a buddy and I got off the phone and I thought ‘Ya know, I feel like everyone should know that Sanford Stadium is not as loud as people think it is, and Neyland’s (Stadium) louder. That’s all it was. It didn’t have anything to do with a football game.
“When I played — and Georgia fans have tried to say ‘Well that was the Richt era’…when we beat Georgia under Mark Richt, they were the #3 team in the country, and had the all-time winningest SEC quarterback David Greene on their team — they were good. They weren’t maybe National Championship good, but they were good, and it still wasn’t that loud.
“It wasn’t a knock on any fans specifically, or the football team, it’s just a factual statement that noise shouldn’t be a huge factor in the game this weekend,” Ainge said. “Now I tweeted that, and I made them all mad. Now I guess they’re all gonna be extra loud.”
During his show in Knoxville Friday, a phone caller to the program also criticized Ainge for his take.
“My grandson showed me your little tweet you had this week, which I think is hilarious,” the caller, identified as Jeff who moved to East Tennessee from Georgia, said. “I get so tired of listening to you talk — it’s the funniest thing in the world — y’all have a dog as a mascot. Dogs don’t volunteer! They get told what to do!
“And my Georgia ‘dogs is (sic) gonna run Tennessee out the field and right on back to Knoxville! All the post and pans, you’re gonna be crying now. I just get so sick and tired of that talk. You sound like we ain’t got a team in Georgia. It’s unbelievable. All these Tennessee fans, it’s like their first date when they’re 13-years-old and it’s their first kiss.”
