Tennessee’s improbable 45-42 overtime win against South Carolina on Saturday night was as unexpected and bizarre as the Halloween night snow that blanketed the Midlands of the Palmetto State on gameday.

It also reinforces a truth as my good friend Derrick Moore, the team chaplain at Georgia Tech always states...

Football is an allegory of life.

Saturday night, the #Vols had a 0.9% chance to win the game with 2:42 remaining in the 4Q... Then Dobbs happened! pic.twitter.com/WtlHaZe3EK — SEC Network (@SECNetwork) November 4, 2014



In life, sometimes you are rolling right along and things are going great. Victory is within your grasp so much so that you can already feel what is not quite there. That feeling is best described as a state of being somewhere between a dream or visualization and actual, tangible reality- a victorious purgatory if you will.

Life is going blissfully well. So was the game, which the Gamecocks led 42-28 with less than two minutes to play.

Then all at once, everything changes. Fate decides this isn’t going to happen. It’s perhaps one of the most catastrophic things that can happen to you- losing something that you thought you had. â€¨â€¨Final score: Tennessee 45, South Carolina 42 (OT)

In life, there are times when all hope seems lost. You are in sort of a pre-apocalyptic state of anticipated failure. Doubt and regret try their best to creep in and deep inside you feel that a loss is inevitable. You scratch and claw and cling to any sign of hope you can. You reassure yourself, argue with yourself, twist facts, refuse to accept the reality of the situation and metaphorically believe you can still plug holes in a sinking ship, even though there are more holes than you have fingers for...there isn’t going to be enough spakle. â€¨â€¨Life looks a little hopeless. So did the game, even when Tennessee cut the lead to 42-35 and kicked an onsides kick that was recovered by the Gamecocks.

But you keep believing and working, resigned to the fact that you are going to do all that you can before your ship goes down. You keep your character and dignity that way. You know that even if you lose, you can still say that you gave it everything you had and that you never gave up, right?

Then all at once, everything changes. Fate decides to smile on you. You find some spakle, you plug the holes- your persistence pays off and you get an unexpected win. It’s perhaps one of the most glorious things that can happen to you- achieving something that is unexpected. For those wearing orange and white in frigid Williams-Brice Stadium on Saturday, the latter happened on the football field.

Final score: Tennessee 45, South Carolina 42 (OT)â€¨â€¨In life when this happens, there’s often a catalyst, be it a person or just the universe working its magic. On the gridiron Saturday, there was an individual catalyst in quarterback Josh Dobbs. Almost as if he stepped off the pages of a novel, the “rocket man” (he’s an aerospace engineering major) refused to take his focus off reaching for the stars and led Tennessee to two improbable drives to tie the game to force overtime before a field goal and the Vols defense finished off the Gamecocks.

Dobbs rushed for 166 yards on 24 carries with three touchdowns and passed for 301 yards and two touchdowns.

The storyline has resonated in life and football since the dawn of time and the start of the sport- don’t give up and good things will happen. It was also a football storyline that resonates particularly with Tennessee, a program that has lost two games since 2010 in which the clock has run out with the Vols ahead on the scoreboard.

The Gamecocks can very likely relate. It’s the third time this season, though by far the most dramatic, they’ve blown more than a two touchdown lead with less than 7 minutes to go in the game.

In conclusion, there are two lessons to be learned here and a warning for future opponents of Tennessee.

One, you can never take anything for granted in life. Nothing is complete before it is and there will be times when things just don’t work out for whatever reason. Fate decides that it’s not meant to be.

Two, you can never give up when things look hopeless, because as long as there is “time on the clock”, magic can happen and things can turn around quickly.

The warning? Don’t tempt the universe if you are playing the Vols. The rocket man is out there battling, not giving up and trying to make things happen. â€¨â€¨And he’s not giving up until the clock hits zero.