Tennessee fans already scared Vols will have to beat the refs too in Athens

There's no love lost between the Tennessee Volunteers and Georgia Bulldogs as two of the SEC's bitter rivals. Whenever the two storied college football programs meet, there's going to be bad blood, there's going to be one fanbase left exceptionally unhappy, and there's going to be complaining.

It's rare, however, that we see the complaining start before a single snap has been taken in a game. There's a first time for everything, though!

Even with the Vols and Bulldogs not kicking off until 7:30 p.m. ET on Saturday evening, Tennessee fans took to the message boards in the morning to put up the radars for the officials. As our good friends at Message Board Geniuses found, Tennessee's checker-boarded faithful were already preparing themselves for the officiating to play a heavy part in the Top 12 showdown.

Excuse-making before anything even happens is certainly one strategy!

Tennessee fans preemptively blaming the refs in matchup at Georgia

By no means am I suggesting that SEC officiating is the best in the world or even that there won't be a questionable call or two during the Tennessee-Georgia game. But already whining about it before kickoff is just a poor mentality for a fanbase, especially one as proud as the Vols.

To be sure, the beauty of Message Board Geniuses is that they find the most irrational members of a given fanbase on these message boards. My best guess is that there are exponentially more Tennessee fans who don't have this mentality or approach to the huge SEC showdown with their rival. So let's just be sure to note that I'm not talking about all Vols fans when talking about any of this — just anyone who is already blaming the refs prior to kickoff.

One thing that's for sure, though, is that the vocal minority voicing such things on Saturday morning are only giving Georgia fans more ammunition to hold over the heads of Tennessee fans.

After all, Georgia has won the last seven meetings against the Vols in this rivalry series, winning by at least two touchdowns in every one of them as well. They already had the fodder to be considered the "big brother" in the modern iteration of this storied rivalry. Now we have a group of Tennessee fans displaying the epitome of a "little brother" mentality.

Beating Georgia and the refs is obviously a near impossible task for even the best of college football programs. But hey, maybe wait until the game starts before making such claims.