In dissing Peyton Manning Monday, Pittsburgh Steelers back DeAngelo Williams showed the jealousy the Memphis Tigers have towards the Tennessee Volunteers.
In December of 2005, I was in Memphis with a friend at McDonald’s and met DeAngelo Williams as he walked in. It was the day after he played his final game with the Tigers, his team had just finished the year with a great win so he could end his college career on a high note.
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Williams was as nice, polite, and humble as you could be, and he was also very funny.
He signed autographs for people in there, spoke with fans and opposing fans alike, and showed himself to be just an all-around good guy.
But when I went up to congratulate him for his performance in his final game with the Tigers, although he was nice to me as well, he could not help but notice the Tennessee Vols shirt I was wearing. And, like many Tigers fans and players whose hatred of Tennessee is much heavier than their love for their school, he had to troll me a bit.
“What bowl did yall go to?” he asked.
It was all in good fun. Tennessee had missed a bowl for the first time in nearly two decades. But somehow, that year, they managed to still beat the Tigers in a game in which Williams was on the sideline.
The eventual NFL star was obviously joking around, and of course I never took it personal, but it was clear he was salty about not being able to play in the game against Tennessee that year, and like many people affiliated with the Tigers, he resented the Vols more than he cared about his school.
That showed again with his Tweets about Peyton Manning Monday.
On a day that was about celebrating the career of Peyton Manning and everything he represents as he announced his retirement, Williams found it necessary to point out on Twitter how he struggled this year and complain about the celebration of Manning.
He then went on a rant defending his tweets.
These Tweets are part of something much deeper. Williams is part of a culture from the University of Memphis that resents anything and everything Tennessee. The hate oozes through with players like him.
Knowing that the school is always second-fiddle to the Vols in everything, he roots against Tennessee to his core.
Williams resents the fact that he never got to beat Tennessee, he resents the fact that his school is the ugly stepsister in the state, and he resents the fact that, no matter how many nice seasons they have, his school will never reach the level of Tennessee.
So he has to do anything to throw shade at that school, and that includes dissing a great like Manning.
To be fair, we won’t even pin this all on Williams. Last year, Memphis Tigers basketball coach Josh Pastner tried to block a player from transferring to Tennessee, citing that the Vols are a potential opponent. The issue with that? Pastner had pulled Tennessee from Memphis’s annual schedule, and it’s not like the Vols are in Memphis’s conference.
The Tigers simply prioritize being against Tennessee over everything, including the success of their program, which is limited.
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That’s why DeAngelo Williams has to diss Peyton Manning on the day he is being honored for his retirement. He just can’t help himself.