Sailgating with the Vol Navy

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The engine hummed, sending vibrations through the Three Point OH’s 54-foot hull from tip to tail.

Slowly, it glided out from underneath the shade of the covered slip as the beaming sun crept up the length of the yacht.

“Your starboard rear is a little close!” de facto first mate Randy Baker yelled to captain John Willcutts, high above the water in the enclosed cockpit. Willcutts slowly guided his ship into the Tennessee River’s unusually swift current (the dam had been opened to prepare for rains from Hurricane Florence) wearing a versatile ensemble: khaki shorts and an orange-striped polo draped over his slender frame, with blue Costa sunglasses and a corresponding hat.

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It’s football time in Tennessee, and around these parts, the fall takes on a distinctly nautical flavor. A day on the water and a day at the stadium are one in the same.

Earlier that morning, Willcutts had already violated a crucial, guiding principle of the sea.

“You never damn start the engine until we have a beer,” Baker explains.

Psst.

Tink.

The soundtrack of a party’s opening salvo makes it official, even though lunch is at least an hour away. The bottle cap is off, bouncing on the counter in the boat’s galley.

“Now,” Baker says, “it’s football time in Tennessee.”

The Vol Navy was birthed by ingenuity six decades ago. As legend has it, one-time “Voice of the Vols” George Mooney grew frustrated with the traffic jams that accompanied game day in Knoxville.

Neyland Stadium towers above the rushing waters of the Tennessee River, only a hundred yards or so from its shore. He got an idea: Forget cars, I’m taking my boat. So he did, and he christened the Vol Navy’s first vessel. He tied his ski boat to a tree outside the stadium and crawled through a shoreline full of rocks and weeds to reach the stadium and find his seat in the press box.

More than a half-century later, “sailgating” has become a signature of Tennessee football. These days, docks all along the banks add a level of civility to the proceedings.

“It’s just a huge party on the water,” said Melanie Willcutts, John’s wife. “I’ve never seen anything else like it.”

As September fades into to October and November, the thick, green foliage that lines both banks will turn shades of yellow, red and orange and contrast with the blue-green tint of the Ohio River’s largest tributary. A picturesque scene out of a painting becomes even more breathtaking, creating one of college football’s must-see landscapes.

Many Washington fans arrive at the stadium by boat, too, via Lake Washington. And Baylor joined the fray by opening McLane Stadium on the banks of the Brazos River in Waco in 2014. “It’s not quite this,” John Willcutts said. “Baylor is basically bass boats on trailers.” 

Protocol at the docks by Neyland Stadium is simple. The biggest boats grab spots close to the dock and smaller boats tie themselves out toward the center of the channel.

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On a big game day with a prime-time kickoff, boats can stack as many as 20 or 30 deep from the shore into the river, but they can’t go too far into the channel. It has to remain navigable for shipping barges that are too busy to bring business to a halt in the name of football.

“You’ll see people of all kinds,” Willcutts said. “And anything that will float. From houseboats to things bigger than this. There’s a 110-foot Westport (yacht) that comes out here.”

John and Melanie grew up together in Loveland, Colo., and when John signed up to attend college halfway across the country, he talked Melanie into joining him for a chilly game against Kentucky way back on Nov. 22, 1980.

Willie Gault returned the opening kick 92 yards for a touchdown that day. Melanie was hooked.

“That happens every week, right?” she prodded her future husband.

While Willcutts was at Tennessee, some older fraternity brothers brought a family boat on the river and renewed Willcutts’ taste for the water. His father built houseboats before dying in a plane crash when John was a boy.

Almost 20 years later, he made it a full-time hobby, purchasing what became the first of three boats specifically to sailgate before games at his alma mater. (Get it, Three Point OH?)

The Willcutts live in Marietta, Ga., and make the trip up every game weekend, and for a few basketball games, too.

“We’ve got three daughters. We’ve got son-in-laws, now all three are married. They plan their fall around a trip here,” he said. “It’s really important for our family.”

Willcutts reunited with Baker, an old friend, when he ran into him at an airport in Willcutts’ early days as a member of the Vol Navy. A short conversation revealed they both had the same plans for Saturday: Taking their respective boats out on the river and going to the game. Now, they do it together.

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Baker, a Delta pilot who lives in west Knoxville, is one of about 10 people milling about the boat’s three decks, with an enclosed living area sandwiched between the cockpit above and three bedrooms below.

The Three Point OH doesn’t have to do much work to make the trek downstream to its parking spot at the Basler Boathouse. Many of the docks are free. It costs $100 a day to set up shop at the place the Vols’ rowing team calls home.

Willcutts barely engages the throttle above idling as his vessel drifts down the Tennessee River, bringing Neyland Stadium closer and closer into view. A flock of geese, flying in a V above, streak across the clear blue sky above the river’s calm waters. An unscheduled pregame flyover.

Karla Sass, UT’s director of rowing operations, is waiting to help tie one of the day’s earliest arrivals to the dock.

So is a man in an orange kilt and custom Tennessee No. 16 jersey. He goes by the name written in all caps on the back. Manning?

Nah, he’s “BIG TASTY.”

“Everybody’s a friend out here,” Sass says. “Everybody’s just happy it’s football season.”

Sass helps direct traffic around the docks, but she doesn’t make it inside the stadium on game day. There’s too much to be done. Instead, she’ll watch or listen to the game when she can. And she’ll keep an eye out for fireworks shooting up out of the stadium.

“Then I know we scored,” she says.

Take a walk (or in our case, a short ride with Baker in an inflatable, motorized dinghy) upstream, and you can’t miss the 18-by-100-foot dual-level houseboat called “It’s All About Me.”

“Admiral Greggy” is waiting on the other side of the sliding glass doors on the bottom deck, with his daughter’s dog, a 2½-year-old Husky named Avanti, as part of the welcoming committee.

Gregg Boles is a retired engineer who lives in Murfreesboro, Tenn., but his boat is docked in Knoxville year-round. During football season, it’s right outside the stadium. He brought it to its current resting place the week before the season opener. It won’t set sail again until sometime after Thanksgiving.

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The bottom level looks like any living room and kitchen you’d see in a house anywhere, with beige carpet, beige tile and a refrigerator in the kitchen. He converted the top level into a floating sports bar, complete with Dish satellite TV. He used to have five screens hanging from the shaded fabric roof to keep patrons cool, dry and well-abreast of the day’s action across the sport. He purchased old seats from Thompson-Boling Arena to line the horseshoe bar underneath the shade. Fans can literally sit on history while they wait for the next chapter to be written at Neyland Stadium.

It’s an open house on game day. Anywhere from 500 to 1,000 people come through the doors on a given weekend, depending on opponent and game time. It’s a tradition for more than the Boles family. Fifteen years ago, a group of girls from a Tennessee sorority wandered onto the boat and found a wonderland of friendly people and free food. They kept coming, and they still do. Now, their husbands and kids join them, passing down the tradition to new members and pledges every year.

Opposing fans are welcome on his boat and nearly every other vessel in the Vol Navy. Even once the alcohol starts flowing, it’s almost always civil.

Roger White, Admiral Greggy’s longtime friend/chief security officer and lieutenant, is in charge of expelling fans who abuse the vessel’s simple rules.

“There are two words that, when put together, that I don’t allow on this boat,” Boles said. “It’s a particular problem when Alabama comes to town.”

And woe be unto the Gators fan who does anything resembling a chomping gesture. It doesn’t have to be the traditional, arms-length celebration. Squeeze two fingers together? You’re gone. There’s no warning. White embraces a strict one-and-done policy.

Wear whatever color you want on the boat, just don’t violate the sanctity of a gridiron temple on the water.

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The boat has been in Boles’ life for more than a decade, but it became a bigger part on one fateful night.

Boles had been leasing the boat for several years at $25,000 a month. His relationship status with the boat changed with a phone call.

“Alcohol was involved,” he said.

He woke up the next morning and frantically redialed. He offered an extra month’s rent to forget the conversation that had occurred the previous evening.

“Sorry,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “You own a boat.”

How much did it set him back?

“It didn’t set me back,” Boles said. “I wrote a check.”

These days, he spends much of his week on the boat. His daughter, former Tennessee tennis player Ashlee Boles, lived on the boat for most of her college career. There are four bedrooms on board, each equipped with a Power T bedspread.

The total number of Power Ts on board is a mystery to everyone but Boles. So is the number he wrote on the infamous check to purchase “It’s All About Me,” and that was before he repainted the hull orange and white and added all the seating upstairs.

He’d been spoiled by club seats for much of his life as a Tennessee fan (“I can’t go back outside now,” he says), but doesn’t attend games anymore. He stays outside the stadium and plays party host as guests — some familiar, some strangers, first-timers and veterans alike — come and go.

“When they fired Fulmer back in ’08, I told them to take my money and shove it up their ass,” Boles said.

Nothing has happened over the last decade to make him soften his stance. Phillip Fulmer is back now, in the athletic director’s role.

Could new coach Jeremy Pruitt win him back? 

“Ah, maybe,” Boles said.

Before the day hits its stride, he’ll make a food run. On this particular Saturday, that means hopping on his golf cart and driving down to Calhoun’s on the River to pick up his catered barbecue.

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When the season rolls on and the temperature drops, the Willcutts will tote their Thanksgiving spread leftovers from Marietta to the Tennessee River, even if nobody’s eating outside when they can see their breath in between bites.

The crowd ebbs and flows as game time comes and goes. After a big win, the river stays lively until long into the night, even as a few boats try to navigate the traffic jam of intertwined vessels on the water to get home.

Game day on the river can be family time and party time, depending on the deck you happen to wander onto. It’s PBR, craft beer and red wine.

It’s for everyone.

It’s the Vol Navy.

It’s football time in Tennessee.

(Photos by Wade Payne)

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