For all of the twists and turns and surprises and upsets the college football season invariably delivers, it's easy to still assume the final chapters have been prewritten, and in the end, the same heroes will emerge victorious.
Just think what life has been like for Tennessee fans who, through 15 years of futility against Alabama, have seen their SEC brethren win 11 national titles, including six by these Crimson Tide, while the only bit of hardware they've scored for themselves was a lone championship of life.
Think of what it must've felt like to see Lane Kiffin's surreal exit and Derek Dooley's tenure and Butch Jones' sideline trash can and Jeremy Pruitt's bags of cash (and also that three days when Greg Schiano was going to be the coach before Twitter nixed the deal) and know that the man on the other side of the field on Saturday had never lost on the third Saturday of October.