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Alabama’s football team has not fared well against schools hailing from Tennessee during a season where both of their losses have come at the hands of squads from that state. Crimson Tide fans already had plenty of bad blood for the Volunteers, so it’s easy to understand why residents in a town around an hour from Tuscaloosa were not thrilled with a water tower being plastered with an orange-and-white checkerboard pattern.
The Alabama Crimson Tide have managed to end up at the center of an impressive number of rivalries in their more than 130 years of existence, and while its bitter in-state feud with Auburn reigns supreme, Nick Saban claims it actually played second fiddle to the one with Tennessee during his time as head coach.
Those teams met for the first time all the way back in 1901, and Alabama currently boasts a 59–40–7 lead in the series that’s still referred to as “The Third Saturday in October” due to the day on which it was historically played until the establishment of separate SEC divisions ruined the fun in the early 1990s.
The series was actually pretty close until the Crimson Tide rattled off 15 straight after kicking off the streak at the start of the Saban Era, but the Volunteers have won two of the last three meetings after mounting a fourth-quarter comeback to secure the 24-17 win in the slight upset they pulled off in October before Neyland Stadium was blanketed with cigar smoke.
It’s safe to assume plenty of the approximately 18,000 people who call Calera, Alabama home were less than thrilled with the outcome of that contest, and according to the Shelby County Reporter, they’re just as displeased with the paint job that was recently slapped on a water tower that now bears an uncanny resemblance to the Tennessee end zone.
The city found itself “flooded” with calls from angry residents and attempted to clear the air with a Facebook post where it said the design was a federally mandated safety measure made necessary by the water tower’s proximity to a local airport.
FAA guidelines dictate the use of “aviation orange” and white paint in an alternating pattern on tall objects with the potential to interfere with aircraft, so while I understand why the people of Calera aren’t happy, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything they can do about it.