Is it basketball season yet?

His face was the first one I saw turn the corner at the statue bearing the eternal flame. Down the hill he came, hand open to his side, making contact with the orange observers as he carefully made his way down Peyton Manning Pass.

I couldn’t help but imagine that Phillip Fulmer must be thinking, “I only have one more of these.”

My wife had just dropped me and my brother-in-law off right at the statue, and we briskly walked down to take position about midway through the Vol Walk. It was my brother-in-law’s first Tennessee game, and him being a 23-year-old native of Knoxville, that was a bit stunning to me. Either way, I wanted him to experience one of the greatest pregame traditions Tennessee has. So there we stood, watching as the Tennessee football team strutted single-file down to Neyland Stadium.

The mood? It was just like any other fall Saturday in Knoxville. “Rocky Top” blared from the Pride of the Southland. The Vol Walk congregation was somewhat down for this Homecoming day. Attribute that to a 1 p.m. kickoff, or the 3-6 Wyoming opponent, or, well, the 3-6 Tennessee record leading into Saturday’s game.

Either way, the people there knew what they were watching: A lame-duck coach who has given his heart and soul to his university facing the people for the first time since administrators told him he wasn’t welcome back.

It was strange. But it didn’t change the fact that we’re all Volunteers. We all had orange on. We all sang “Rocky Top,” either aloud or in our heads, depending on our vocal skills and modesty. And whether we had wanted Fulmer gone or not in recent weeks, we were glad he had been on our side in the past.

So there they went. The Vols funneled into the bowels of Neyland and the onlookers dispersed. Time for business.

Problem is, business is dead. When Nick Stephens threw a point-blank-range interception into the hands of Mike Neuhaus, it all but sealed the fate of Tennessee on this day. One play later, Wyoming was up 7-0. One interception later, Wyoming was up 13-0 and it didn’t even matter what happened after that.

Boos? They weren’t there like I had expected. I fully anticipated the stadium shaking from irate fans and ticket holders protesting the way their Volunteers had performed not only in recent weeks, but in one of Tennessee’s worst hours of football – a Homecoming loss to the Cowboys. It was the first time the Vols have lost to a Mountain West Conference team, and it tied Tennessee’s only seven-loss season in school history. The Vols have never lost eight games in a season.

Cheers? Wyoming had plenty, and in all honesty, I felt good for them. This was one of the Cowboys’ biggest wins ever.

And that all leads to the conversations.

Standing in the bathroom immediately following the game, in a place just outside of where the Wyoming radio announcers and supporters were housed, one Cowboy traveler had this simple assessment: “Wow. Wow.” It was evident this was a bigger victory for Wyoming than it was a loss for Tennessee.

Just after the bathroom, three men with strong ties to the program stood waiting on the elevator to take them to field level. “Well,” said one of the men, “for all those alumni who didn’t agree with Mike Hamilton’s decision, I guess they’re on board now.” Another man responded: “That was the worst performance I’ve seen here, period. The worst.”

It made me think, not about the historical perspective of worsts and bests in Neyland, but of the level we’ve dropped to. Homecoming is a positive experience, typically aside from the football. Because typically, the football is a mind-numbing victory over a directional school. But the only positives from this Homecoming came from a third conversation held even before the kickoff.

“Whoa, what about 40-2?” said one man. He was speaking of Friday night’s basketball 82-51 exhibition victory over Tusculum, when the Vols raced out to a 40-2 start. I grew up following Tennessee basketball well before Tennessee football, and I always wondered what it would be like to go to a basketball school. I’ve graduated Tennessee now, but that a preseason exhibition game was being heralded over the Tennessee football team in November was perhaps the most telling thing of a Homecoming weekend.