Half-price beer moved the crowd through security early for a president who came to Neyland to sell a bill none of the players below him could vote on.

Gushis side

GUS: Ladies and gentlemen, the week began in a television studio rather than on a field. On the eighteenth of September, Kirk Herbstreit defended his network's decision to seat Senator Ted Cruz of Texas on College GameDay. "We had him on because they were going to be voting this week," Herbstreit told reporters. This reporter notes the candor.

GUS: Two days later The Hill placed the legislative spotlight squarely on the Senate, the House having gone out for the final two weeks of September, with final passage pending on a measure creating national rules for compensating college athletes and limiting transfers. Introduced in March, it had already traveled farther than any collegiate sports bill in the history of the Congress.

GUS: On Wednesday the twenty-third the White House confirmed the president's attendance, his first college football game since January's championship, in which Notre Dame defeated Miami. By Thursday the Examiner had it confirmed as well, the news broken by OutKick founder Clay Travis. In Knoxville the gates would open early with fifty percent off the beer, the gals in their orange arriving at an hour the ushers do not ordinarily work.

GUS: Saturday the twenty-sixth delivered pageantry of a kind this sport has rarely assembled — the new-look Air Force One low over Neyland, a roaring house, No. 1 Texas against the No. 14 Volunteers at noon. From that house the president vouched for the bill and credited Speaker Mike Johnson of Mississippi: "Mike Johnson's fantastic. And we actually had 78 votes, if you can believe it." Bipartisanship, he said, for the first time in a while.

GUS: ABC's audio dissolved into static, the Post having warned of possible disruptions; before boarding, the president told a reporter, "I want real news, not fake news, like you." Texas escaped, Colin Simmons recording five sacks and Raleek Brown scoring twice. Monday was final passage, the Senate's last chance before recessing into the lame-duck period, and the men in the helmets were the only people in that stadium whose pay the guest of honor had come to settle.

GUS: Nor did the schedule relent. At a Mobile rally on the third of October the president announced his return for No. 7 Alabama against No. 2 Georgia at Bryant-Denny on the tenth, one stop among several states ahead of the midterms. By the seventh, Fox reported Hurricane Isaias threatening that game and the Secret Service preparing; the Post called it a nightmare scenario.