The connotation of rainy days and Mondays commonly take on the deeper meaning of low times. Sometimes it means there’s a lot of work to do at the office. Sometimes it refers to personal problems.

For me, it was the latter of the two.

I worked all day Monday, from 9 a.m. until about 9 p.m., but that didn’t bother me. And I’m actually somewhat of a fan of gloomy, cold, cloudy weather, so that wasn’t what had me feeling low, either.

The cause of my pain was the cause of delight to hundreds of thousands — probably millions of people at about 8:30 Monday night. Alabama and LSU were both in the college football national championship.

As a Tennessee grad, that notion is gross.

It’s repulsive for a Volunteer to think about Alabama winning the national title for reasons I don’t think require too much explaining.

We really don’t like each other. We pretty much hate each other. If you go to UT or ’Bama for school and attend a football game it is hilarious to see how cruel people are to each other for no reason other than they have history, they’ve both had heavy hands in writing the book of college football, and they’ve played each other 93 times dating back to 1901.

Of course, there’s also the incident in which former Vol coach Phillip Fulmer prompted an NCAA investigation of the Alabama program in 2000 after a ’Bama booster allegedly paid a high school coach in Memphis, Tenn., $50,000 to encourage a hopeful recruit to join the Crimson Tide.

There’s plenty of beef between the teams, and aside from the more recent pain-in-the-neck Florida Gators, the team I can’t stand the most is Alabama — end of story.

My problem with LSU should speak for itself, too, to college football followers.

Some of you may remember the 2007 SEC championship game in which the Tigers defeated the Volunteers 21-14.

What you might not remember is Tennessee’s quarterback, then-senior Erik Ainge, threw the game-winning touchdown pass to a Tiger linebacker who could have walked the distance of open field to the end zone without being touched. It was one of Ainge’s two interceptions in the fourth quarter alone, and it gift-wrapped a national championship appearance for LSU — one the Tigers took advantage of in a 38-24 win over Ohio State.

Furthermore, LSU pulled off a painful 16-14 win against the Big Orange in 2010. That year marked a new era in Knoxville with Derek Dooley taking over the reigns of the football program and Volunteer faithful excited to see about anyone other than Lane Kiffin on the sideline.

That game mattered like food and water considering UT started the season 2-3, 0-2 in the SEC and LSU (5-0, 3-0) was ranked 12th in the nation at the time. The Vols appeared to have won the game 14-10 as time expired, but after being convicted of having 13 defensive players on the field UT gave LSU one final attempt from the 1-yard line. Of course the Tigers took advantage of the opportunity.

I didn’t watch much of this year’s title game. I mainly just caught the final score before calling it a day.

But my point in sharing such grief is that it is hard being a fan of any SEC team because your team plays all the big teams every year. It has certainly been hard being a Tennessee fan through recent years of much change, but going the distance is what makes a fan a fan. I’m sure everyone will agree with that.