Official offseason posting contest: Number I (winner chosen)

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#1
Freak

Freak

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#1
So I'm looking for some ways to help us get through the offseason. It's probably going to be a long summer.

So here's my idea. Make posts in this thread about anything you want. It can be about football, sports, entertainment, something funny that happened at work, or whatever.

There are a few rules, however.

No post padding. Your posts will need to actually contain a thought of more than just a few words. It doesn't need to be a paragraph or anything but it needs to have a little substance. The same goes for replies. If you quote someone you'll need to respond with more than a couple words, adding something of value.

The thread will end at 1,001 posts. Any posts after the 1,000th reply won't count. After the thread ends I'll use a random number generator to choose one winning post and that post we will receive a $25 gift card.

We'll see how it goes.

If you have ideas for any other contests we could do this summer, hit me up and let me know about it at vol_Freak@yahoo.com.

Ready. Set. Go.
 
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#2
#2
FIRST 🤓

Watch me on TV at FL LB Jarrad Davis' NFL draft party. I am the one throwing the Vols hand sign up.
 
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#4
#4
I am in DC on a mini vacation and have run into 3 sets of VOL fans! (I wear 1 of many Vol hats everywhere i go!). REPRESENTIN VOL STYLE in DC!
 
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#5
#5
Had anyone of you ever trolled the Florida sights, like the swamp gas boards? I know they troll around on here and we don't seem to snuff it out. Just wondering. I refuse to go there to check it out for myself. Hate those gators.
 
#7
#7
Military static line parachute jumps typically start at about 750' to 1,000' above ground level (AGL). You can go as low as 500' AGL; as long as everything works perfectly, you'll be fine (it takes 294' vertical feet for the T-10C parachute to fully deploy, and another 50 to 100 feet after that to stabilize your decent to a no-broken-bones 14 feet per second). So 500 feet is enough, and that's how low we can execute combat jumps. But in peacetime training, we go 750' or higher to give you time to deploy your reserve if you're still free-falling after the four seconds it should take your main to pop open.

So if you jump at 1,000' AGL, you spend those first 300-400' or so falling pretty quickly while your chute opens and you stabilize, then you get anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute hanging in your harness, drifting lazily down the remaining 600-700', before you have to lower your equipment and get ready to hit the ground.

One of my first night jumps at Fort Bragg after joining my battalion when I was a brand new captain, we were doing a night combat equipment jump, mass-tac (which means several big aircraft full of troopers all jumping out over the same drop zone as quickly as the birds can take turns passing overhead).

Unfortunately, the Air Force pilots seemed a little off their game. Maybe too many pre-flight drinks at the club before coming out to meet us on the airstrip. Maybe Raquel Welch was going to be on TV later that night and they were distracted. Not sure why, but here's how it turned out for us.

The drop zone we were using that night was more or less oriented north-south on its long axis, which means the airplanes should pass north-south over it to get the most troopers onto the drop zone and not in the trees to either side. Naturally, the pilots all chose to fly northwest-southeast, meaning the first 15-20 and the last 15-20 troops on each aircraft landed either in the trees or right at the edge of them.

And then maybe their altimeters were all a little wonky that night, because I am not kidding you, here's how my jump went, from stepping out the door of the bird: "One Thousand, Two Thousand, Three Thousand, Four Thousand!" (counting so I know when I should feel the groin-aching jerk of my parachute opening properly). "Ooof!" (the parachute opened properly; my male bits were now jam-packed, so to speak). Look up, check canopy; all looks great in the moonlight! Look around to avoid fellow jumpers: SLAM!!:! (that was me crumpling into the ground, no more than 12-15 seconds after exiting the aircraft). Awwww.....shiiiiiiii.... (that was me figuring out why it's important to adopt a good prepare-to-land body position, and what it feels like when you don't).

Anyway, we must've exited the aircraft no MORE than 500' above the ground, and I would guess as low as 400'. In the moonlight, I totally missed seeing the ground rushing up at me, hadn't yet even thought about looking down.

So there we were, about 250 or so soldiers (not a full battalion, we only got four C-130s that night), spread out diagonally across Sicily Drop Zone on Fortress Bragg, about half of us in the trees (but they tend to be scrubby pines right around the edge of the DZ, so most troopers passed right through to the ground; we only had to help down maybe 15-20 total).

The zoomies were all back at base, in their officer club sucking beers before we even started getting the first troops out of the trees. I'm pretty confident of that.

This isn't the only "Air Force sucks" story in my repertoire, but it's one of the better ones.

It's pretty funny to look back on today. My squished boy parts, cracked ribs and aching shoulder have more or less fully recovered.

Why tell you all this? No reason; thought I'd just regurgitate an old "no sheet, there I was" story as part of Freak's idea to pass the time.

Go Vols! Go Army! Screw you, Air Force!
 
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#8
#8
I'll contribute a joke....

Q: Why are there no UGA fans in the porn industry?

A: Because try as they might, they always come up a bit short
 
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#9
#9
Bald VN members I know your out their and call upon your advice. Mid 20s hairs getting thin on top. Embrace the bald early on or try to hang on to what's left?
 
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#10
#10
Great idea Freak...I'll help with a few questions

Anybody crossing off some bucket list stuff this off season?


My 8 year old wants to play soccer..disown him or become a soccer dad?


I'd like to see a sticky with the links to the most popular opponents' forums...for trolling and meltdown viewing purposes only cause there is no equal to VN!

Here is the schedule feel free to post links under the teams
Sept. 4: vs. Georgia Tech | Mercedes-Benz Stadium | Atlanta
Sept. 9: vs. Indiana State
Sept. 16:*at Florida
Sept. 23: vs. Massachusetts
Sept. 30: vs. Georgia
Oct. 7:*OFF
Oct. 14: vs. South Carolina
Oct. 21:*at Alabama
Oct. 28:*at Kentucky
Nov. 4: vs. Southern Miss
Nov. 11:*at Missouri
Nov. 18: vs.*LSU
Nov. 25: vs.*Vanderbilt
 
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#12
#12
I truly believe that Jason Croom and Corey Vereen are front runners to be the 2017 NFL Draft "Mr. Irrelevant Pick", AKA #253 last pick in the draft.

The Denver Broncos have the last two picks in the draft and could go for some value picks that fit their needs. They will draft several DL and Vereen could be an extra pick towards that. Denver's run defense was atrocious last year after losing Malik Jackson and a few other linemen. OL and Run stopping kept the Broncos from repeating as Superbowl Champs.

The Broncos could also use a TE for QB outlet passes but don't want to use and early pick on TEs as OL and DL are their priorities. Several NFL teams have given Croom a good look as he has great height, speed...for a TE, good hands as he was a WR and he really came on strong towards the end of the season as he got in his TE reps and fully recovered from his knee issues of 2015. He is a hidden gem or late bloomer.

Plus the Broncos have always done much better when the have a few Vols on the Team!
 
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#15
#15
VFL-82-JP said:
Military static line parachute jumps typically start at about 750' to 1,000' above ground level (AGL). You can go as low as 500' AGL, and as long as everything works perfectly, you'll be fine (it takes 294' vertical feet for the T-10C parachute to fully deploy, and another 50 to 100 feet after that to stabilize your decent to a no-broken-bones 14 feet per second). So 500' feet is enough, and that's how low we can execute combat jumps. But in peacetime training, we go 750' or higher to give you time to deploy your reserve if you're still free-falling after the four seconds it should take your main to pop open.

So if you jump at 1,000' AGL, you spend those first 300-400' or so falling pretty quickly while your chute opens and you stabilize, then you get anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute sitting in your harness, drifting lazily down the remaining 600-700', before you have to lower your equipment and get ready to hit the ground.

One of my first night jumps at Fort Bragg after joining my battalion when I was a brand new captain, we were doing a night combat equipment jump, mass-tac (which means several big aircraft full of troopers all jumping out over the same drop zone as quickly as the birds can take turns passing overhead).

Unfortunately, the Air Force pilots seemed a little off their game. Maybe too many pre-flight drinks at the club before coming out to meet us on the airstrip. Maybe Raquel Welch was going to be on TV later that night and they were distracted. Not sure why, but here's how it turned out for us.

The drop zone we were using that night was more or less oriented north-south on its long axis, which means the airplanes should pass north-south over it to get the most troopers onto the drop zone and not in the trees to either side. Naturally, the pilots all chose to fly northwest-southeast, meaning the first 15-20 and the last 15-20 troops on each aircraft landed either in the trees or right at the edge of them.

And then maybe their altimeters were all a little wonky that night, because I am not kidding you, here's how my jump went, from stepping out the door of the bird: "One Thousand, Two Thousand, Three Thousand, Four Thousand!" (counting so I know when I should feel the groin-aching jerk of my parachute opening properly). "Ooof!" (the parachute opened properly; my male bits were now jam-packed, so to speak). Look up, check canopy; all looks great in the moonlight! Look around to avoid fellow jumpers: SLAM!!:! (that was me crumpling into the ground, no more than 12-15 seconds after exiting the aircraft). Awwww.....shiiiiiiii.... (that was me figuring out why it's important to adopt a good prepare-to-land body position, and what it feels like when you don't).

Anyway, we must've exited the aircraft no MORE than 500' above the ground, and I would guess as low as 400'. In the moonlight, I totally missed seeing the ground rushing up at me, hadn't yet even thought about looking down.

So there we were, about 250 or so soldiers (not a full battalion, we only got four C-130s that night), spread out diagonally across Sicily Drop Zone on Fortress Bragg, about half of us in the trees (but they tend to be scrubby pines right around the edge of the DZ, so most troopers passed right through to the ground; we only had to help down maybe 15-20 total).

The zoomies were all back at base, in their officer club sucking beers before we even started getting the first troops out of the trees. I'm pretty confident of that.

This isn't the only "Air Force sucks" story in my repertoire, but it's one of the better ones.

It's pretty funny to look back on today. My squished boy parts, cracked ribs and aching shoulder have more or less fully recovered.

Why tell you all this? No reason; thought I'd just regurgitate an old "no sheet, there I was" story as part of Freak's idea to pass the time.

Go Vols! Go Army! Screw you, Air Force!
Click to expand...

Reminds me of a good D-day story for the 101st and the 82nd. Seems some of the pilots of the C-47s (many had less than 200 hrs flight time), were spooked by the tracers and anti aircraft guns. Rather than slow down, they sped up. Troopers (some) entered the slipstream at over 110 mph. This put enormous stress on the chutes when opening, and most lost their leg bags (a british invention to haul more gear), plus it spread them out and made it harder to find each other upon landing.

To me, these guys are heroes. God bless 'em.
 
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#16
#16
In addition to being an airborne combat engineer, I spent part of my career as what's called a "foreign area officer."

You know how there are US military officers assigned to most of our embassies overseas, "attaches"?
That's the kind of job foreign area officers do. That plus serving as liaison officers to our allies and so on.

So I'm a European FAO. Could be assigned anywhere in the world, but my language skills (French, German, a little Spanish) and education (West European Studies at Indiana University) make me most useful in Europe.

So my very first job as a new European FAO is as a trainee. I'm assigned to spend six months with the French Army, then another five months traipsing around Europe visiting many of our embassies, getting briefings, spending time with some other country's soldiers, that sort of thing.

The time with the French Army went great. We give those fellas a lot of grief, like when they tried to sell all their old World War 2 rifles and the advertisement read, "low price! never fired; dropped once!" But they're actually very professional, and (WWII aside) have a pretty solid reputation as fighters.

It's what happened during that five-month "travel Europe" phase that was most interesting.

See, I was there with another American military officer, a helicopter pilot that I'll call Marcia. Marcia was single, but I was married to my beautiful bride, Jacqueline, who was encouraged to go with us both to France for the year, and on each individual orientation trip to other countries.

One of those trips we took was down to Spain and Morocco. Spain because, you know, Europe, but Morocco because it's a former French colony that is still very closely tied to Europe in a lot of defense/security (and diplomatic, economic, and historic) ways.

Did I mention that Marcia is very skittish? The kind of person who jumps out of her seat if you drop something or the phone rings unexpectedly? Yeah, she is. Great helicopter pilot, but skittish as all hell when she's not in the cockpit.

So we're operating on like 4 hours of sleep a night the whole week we're in Spain. Time to head down to Gibraltar to get a situational briefing from the British officers assigned there on the unique security concerns that come with being a United Kingdom enclave at the tip of Spain, then we hop the ferry boat across the strait to Morocco.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, Saddam Hussein's cousin did.

As we join the throng of humanity leaving the ferry at the dock in Tangier, the port of entry to Morocco, we come face to face with a huge, heavily-mustached border control officer of the Moroccan army. Dude could, I kid you not, be Saddam's twin (at this point in history, Saddam is still very much alive and in control of his country, and pissed off at the US for that whole 1991 Kuwait deal).

So this dude looks just like him. And there I am with a dog-tired and pissed-off wife, as well as the most skittish officer in the US Army. The border agent thinks they're both my wives.

He reaches for my passport, no problem. Looks at it a while, and wants to ask if I'm a soldier (the haircut), but we're traveling on civilian passports and he finally just shrugs. Takes the passport from my wife, kind of rudely, a little of the "I hate having to deal with lowly women" vibe coming off him, but still it went well. Then he reached for Marcia's passport...and she for some weird reason jerked it away from him. I think she wanted him to look at it without her totally surrendering it to him; I don't know. All I do know is that he went into meltdown mode. He didn't yell at Marcia; no, he yelled at me, her "husband", and told me in strongly accented French to get "my women" under control.

Haha, so I did what any red-blooded American man would do. I told him, 'Yes, sir, I'm gonna get right on that." And got Marcia's passport back, and quickly ushered "my women" into the terminal.

I thought we were home safe then. But the fun was just starting...a wave of 10-15 year olds cascaded over us, every one of them asking to help us: get you a coca-cola, lady? carry your bags for you, mister? take you to your train? want something to eat? need a taxi? my cousin, he's a great tour guide, you need a tour guide? That was it for Jacque; she'd had enough. LAISSE MOI! [roughly, French for LEAVE ME ALONE!] ...

It was like a small nuclear explosion. My sweetie has lungs. She probably hit the same 114 decibals Neyland hit during the Oklahoma game. Every single Moroccan kid, I sheet you not, ended up two steps further from us than they were right before she yelled.

But it worked. Gave us room to find our way out of the terminal and to our train car.

Sorry, this one went way too long. And Freak's (and everyone else) are probably tired of me turning this thread into my own personal reminiscence logs, heh.

But hey, I just wasted 3-5 minutes of the summer for you! We're that much closer to September 4th!

Go Vols!
 
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#17
#17
VolnJC said:
Great idea Freak...I'll help with a few questions

Anybody crossing off some bucket list stuff this off season?


My 8 year old wants to play soccer..disown him or become a soccer dad?


I'd like to see a sticky with the links to the most popular opponents' forums...for trolling and meltdown viewing purposes only cause there is no equal to VN!

Here is the schedule feel free to post links under the teams
Sept. 4: vs. Georgia Tech | Mercedes-Benz Stadium | Atlanta
Sept. 9: vs. Indiana State
Sept. 16:*at Florida
Sept. 23: vs. Massachusetts
Sept. 30: vs. Georgia
Oct. 7:*OFF
Oct. 14: vs. South Carolina
Oct. 21:*at Alabama
Oct. 28:*at Kentucky
Nov. 4: vs. Southern Miss
Nov. 11:*at Missouri
Nov. 18: vs.*LSU
Nov. 25: vs.*Vanderbilt
Click to expand...

Well, I am a soccer fan, so I say embrace it.
 
#18
#18
vollygirl said:
"Chris Blue from Tennessee" .... on The Voice. This guy is phenomenal.
Click to expand...

Yep he is good...reminds me though...you know what pisses me off about musicians? They always say they "do it all for the fans" well why are concerts and merchandise so expensive then? Why can't they just say " I have a great voice and I want to use it to make crazy bank" ?
getting_on_my_soapbox_by_aniketosen-d5and0i.gif


2015_avg_cons_spend.jpg
 
#19
#19
I'll just introduce the next big thing in rock and roll tribute bands.
 

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#20
#20
Bill polian is the ebeneezer scrooge of the NFL draft. He hates everybody....😂
 
#21
#21
ptcarter said:
Reminds me of a good D-day story for the 101st and the 82nd. Seems some of the pilots of the C-47s (many had less than 200 hrs flight time), were spooked by the tracers and anti aircraft guns. Rather than slow down, they sped up. Troopers (some) entered the slipstream at over 110 mph. This put enormous stress on the chutes when opening, and most lost their leg bags (a british invention to haul more gear), plus it spread them out and made it harder to find each other upon landing.

To me, these guys are heroes. God bless 'em.
Click to expand...

Yeah, man, huge respect for those guys. What they sacrificed to free Europe of the disease that was Hitler, it was huge. And one of my favorites of them all died just a couple of years ago in Wilmington, North Carolina. Great man, loved and missed by many.

Truly the greatest generation for America.
 
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#23
#23
I am having a beer at a brewery in Berkeley and a kid next to me was carded. Turns out today is his 21st birthday, so I bought him his beer. I remember Zinnie's in midtown Memphis was one of the places I went on my 21st b-day many moons ago.

And Go Grizz.
 
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