Are my eyes really blue?

(cross-posted from Anchor of Gold)

If there was ever a must-win game, this was it. Home, against a foe that we led by 17 on the road only to let it slip away, with the peril of 3-5 in the conference at the halfway mark if we didn’t come through. Fortunately, the guys answered the bell today and delivered the kind of win we thought would be routine this year (and might have been if we didn’t keep catching one career day after another from our foes).

The Big Three all delivered the goods – John Jenkins leading the way with 18 and Festus and JT delivering 17 apiece – but special credit to Rod Odom, who went 3-3 from behind the arc for his 9 points, including a buzzer-dagger to finish the first half that send the ‘Dores to the locker room up 7 and nursing momentum at halftime for the first time in ages. Injury has made the forward spots a weakness in recent weeks, and Odom has had to grow up fast – and his development is a hopeful sign for games to come. Brad Tinsley chipped in with 13 points off the hot hand, even if he did go for the ill-advised free-throw-line dunk down the stretch (to the high amusement of Joe Fisher).

16-6, and 4-4 in the conference. It’s a disappointment, given what we thought we’d get this year, but if this is the turnaround point, big things are still possible. We get another crack at Florida and Tennessee, both at home, and have the two Alabama schools yet to play (even if they have stepped it up a little, you have to think we’re going to be favorites there). This isn’t the best year for the SEC, so 20 wins and .500 in conference probably won’t be enough to punch a ticket in March, but after today there’s little doubt that this team has it in them to turn things around.

Next up: home against the Crimson Tide on Thursday, possibly with Andre Walker back in action. Time to start a new and better streak.

8:19.

That’s what I remember hearing, to the tune of Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen”, every weekday morning for most of three years.

During my second stint at the apartments in Arlington, the same boom box bought in 1993 was my alarm clock and white-noise device. Permanently affixed to WAMU, it would lull me to sleep at night with the sounds of the BBC World Service and wake me up with the somnolent tones of NPR Morning Edition. So naturally, I had to set the alarm well in advance, as that wasn’t going to blast me out of bed.

The time announcements were at weird intervals, but every weekday – 8:19. And if I got out of bed then, I could shower, get dressed, check my email, and leave for the Metro stop in time to get a train that would deliver me to Farragut Square in time to walk to work, buy my big 24-oz Dr Pepper from the Boss on the corner, and walk through the door bang-on 9:30 AM, when my official work day began.

Now, the first alarms start going off just before 7 AM, and depending on where I’m working that day, I need to have showered the night before because there’s not time to make it to the 7:29 light rail that starts the odyssey – and if that light rail is more than 4 minutes late, it’s going to be 8:15 before another train that’s any use comes along. On the other hand, if I’m not going to my own office, the light rail is at 7:45 and I have time to shower, which is helpful. Especially to the end-users, I suppose.

The flip side, of course, is that I’m out of work at 5. In DC, I was out of work at 6, which meant I got home closer to 7. But then again, it was rare to get to bed before midnight in DC, and now I’m glancing at the stairs pretty much anytime past 10 PM. As a result, the 9 o’clock hour – which used to be when the McTeggarts kicked off at the 4Ps – has become a sort of no-man’s-land where it’s too late to start anything serious but too early to go to bed. Not coincidentally, this is usually where the dishwasher gets unloaded and reloaded.

But it’s still weird sometimes to sink into my chair at my desk, rub my eyes, and think “you know, back East I’m not even out of bed yet.”

(repurposed from Anchor of Gold, because we use every part of the schtick)

The morning after National Signing Day, to me, feels a little like New Year’s Day 2009 – waking up, shaking the cobwebs out, seeing all my black and gold scattered all over the house, all the text-messages and emails that I hadn’t deleted from the previous afternoon, and coming to grips with the idea of a world where the Commodore football team had a winning record and a bowl victory. And thinking “did that really happen?”

 

The same feeling started yesterday, when the best man at my wedding – a 3rd-gen Virginia Tech fan – asked me “did that just happen?” And I saw the news about Lafonte Thourogood – our four-star prospect with the five-star name – and realized that things are different now. In fact, there are now no less than five reasons to think that this year is the beginning of a new era in Vanderbilt football:

 

 

 

2) DUAL-THREATS. All three of the QB prospects were identified as dual-threat players. Van der Wal projects at tight end OR defensive end. Josh Grady is talked about at three different positions, potentially. These are guys who have the potential to go where we need them most – so instead of having a logjam at QB, we have a bunch of talent with the flexibility to be pencilled in all over the field. This is not an inconsequential advantage.

 

3) HERB HAND. Everything starts in the trenches. Nobody wins without an O-line. We still have Coach Hand in the fold, and he has (fiddling with calculator) over 1500 pounds of new offensive linemen to work with even before the strength and conditioning guys get to them. Superior O-line play means that guys like Warren Norman and Zac Stacy and Wes Tate will have room to run. And speaking of…

 

4) JERRON SEYMOUR. Living in NorCal and having a wife with her own season-tickets, I’ve seen a lot of Pac-12 guys that were “too small.” Guys like Jahvid Best at Cal, or Jacquizz Rodgers at Oregon State, or – well, DeSean Jackson, who I personally watched break Tennessee’s will with a run in 2007 that looked like something off Madden. On top of all our RB talent, we now have our own waterbug quark-back – and having Seymour’s speed is just one more essential weapon in a conference defined by speed.

 

5) COACH. JAMES. FRANKLIN. How many guys did he bring on board just in that last weekend? How many guys did he wheedle away from other BCS-conference programs with more than one bowl appearance since the Carter administration? And he’s not talking about our signees as if we’re never going to get another four-star guy again – he’s bringing in a top-50 recruiting class and then putting them on notice that he’s going after guys who will take their jobs.

 

But the best thing Coach Franklin brings to the table, in my estimation, is what he doesn’t know.

 

See, he’s not from here. He doesn’t have the SEC ties. He has no background with the program. He doesn’t know what everybody else “knows”, everyone from Biddle to Climer to the guys on 3-Hour Lunch to every other AD and coach in the conference. He doesn’t “know” things are hopeless. He doesn’t “know” that Vandy has no business trying to compete in SEC football. He doesn’t “know” this program is a coach killer, that football is just something to kill weekends until basketball season, that no matter what, things will always collapse in the end and the program can be dismissed with “same old Vandy.” And since he doesn’t know any of those things, he’s acting like this team is going to go out there and fight like the very devil and shock the world. And what James Franklin doesn’t know is going to be hell on twelve other teams when fall comes.

 

The rocket is real, and you can be on it or under it, but it’s going to fly. All in? Hell yes, all in.

Fuck a ref.

* The game looks a lot different from three rows behind the floor. All the blue and gold right up close made me feel like I was back at my brother’s high school in 1993 watching a game. Albeit with much bigger guys. And the paid admission for the whole gym probably wouldn’t have paid for our two tickets.

* Not that we paid for them. It’s cool to have a wife who has basically turned into her workplace’s Winston Wolf and is compensated accordingly.

* The nicest sportcoat and date-night Docs on earth can’t conceal the fact that the top of my domepiece is a disaster area. I must take all possible measures to avoid ever being photographed or televised from above and behind ever again.

* I know much is being made of the Baylor kid, but I don’t think Biedrens is ready to give up the 5 spot yet – nor, based on last night, should he.

* Looking forward to seeing John Jenkins become the next Stephen Curry. Not looking forward to the thought that it could happen next year.

* Reggie Williams isn’t getting near enough money, and would be a great piece of the puzzle for the Warriors to hang onto going forward.

* I’d a lot rather trade Ellis than Curry – Ellis has certain avowed knucklehead tendencies that I think might have been constrained had they kept Baron Davis around, plus he’s prone to go cold at bad times (he had TWO points last night. I put as many points on the board in the first half as he did.)

* The Warriors have a stand up in one end under the luxury boxes, where random DJs will spin tracks and mix on the fly before the game and at halftime. And they do a pretty good job too.

* To hell with the cheerleaders, the “Flying Ws” are the most amazing thing I ever saw. These guys do ridiculous shit off a trampoline in front of one goal after the third quarter, and it’s got to make the doctors in the audience get dollar signs in their eyes…but they stuck every landing.

* I do like the move back to the more traditional look – the lighter blue and no more red-orange third color – but it appears to have cost the Warriors their costumed mascot. On the other hand, the four weird guys look less like mental patients now that they’re in blue rather than orange. And they all have impressive throwing arms; one guy was slinging shirts into the stands at a distance that normally requires the gun.

* Doris Burke is really quite a good color analyst, and should get more airtime.

* Part of what really undermined the NBA for me was when the draft was taken over with high school kids and foreign players. Being a follower of college basketball, the notion that being a senior in college meant you weren’t good enough for the NBA, else you’d have been drafted already – it flew in the face of logic and reason, especially as one underage bust after another crapped the bed. I’ll be interested to see how this plays out as the CBA expires and the NBA faces its own labor trouble – although it should be obvious at this point that the owners have all the cards in that upcoming negotiation.

* This was enough to take the edge off the Vandy debacle this weekend – which was further softened when we didn’t drop out of the top-25. Now just beat Florida and all is forgiven.

* Thanks for the tickets, sweetie – more thanks for driving home ;]

The Jay Cutler nonsense really put a spotlight on the worst aspects of the league. To wit:

* A culture of rugged machismo that requires players to sacrifice their health, short term and long alike

* A media and commentary culture that couldn’t be more uniform or lockstep

* A ubiquity unparalleled by any other sport in America

* Everything this article talks about.

I’ve made no secret that I don’t care for the NFL – I really don’t care for it with the upcoming lockout looming. After all, we’ve just established that the players are expected to push themselves beyond the limits of health or sanity. Now consider that NFL contracts are non-guaranteed, which means that except for the signing bonus, a team can cut their $100M quarterback tomorrow and owe him not a penny. Now the ownership is pushing for an 18-game schedule, which can only make player health a bigger issue than ever. And this is a lockout. That’s the key thing: this is not a player strike, this is ownership shutting down the game until the players give in.

Everyone characterized labor disputes in pro sports as “millionaires fighting billionaires.” Nowhere is this less true than the NFL, where players can be ejected at the drop of a hat after an average career of 3 years and facing a slew of long-term health issues that are becoming too evident to ignore. And yet, the NFL is beyond question – it’s on every freakin’ channel (seriously, it’s on five different networks), it’s even got its own channel, it draws tens of millions of viewers for a championship game that is to football what St Patricks Day is to Irish drinking, and it is as staid and boring a league and sport as can be imagined. Seriously, when a direct snap to a running back makes everyone break out in cries of “WILDCAT!” and is treated as an innovation on par with the Manhattan Project, it’s apparent that professional football is dull AND predictable – everyone runs a Tampa Cover-2 defense, everybody runs some variant of the West Coast offense, fake kicks are rarer than a virgin at Auburn, and the quality of announcing is such that I would rather listen to local broadcasters on radio while riding around than actually endure a game watching the kind of borderline mental defectives that Fox uses for games – or worse yet, the moronical stylings of Monday Night Football and Jon Gruden. (I TELL YOU WHAT, JAWS, YOU NEED TO TAKE CHEAP SHOTS IF YOU’RE GOING TO RUN A BLOG, AND THIS BLOGGER RIGHT HERE CAN TAKE A CHEAP SHOT, I CALL HIM THE SHARPSHOOTER, BECAUSE THIS GUY CAN TAKE THE CHEAP SHOTS.)

The head of the NFLPA said that on a scale of 1-10, the probability of a lockout was a 14. It would be Armageddon for pro football in this country. And nothing in the world of sports would make me happier than to watch the biggest, fattest, smuggest sports league on Earth implode for an entire season.

It was bad enough to give up 36 points to Clarke, but we gave up 20 points to a scrub who had 17 points on the year. Combined. Not a 17 point average, 17 TOTAL POINTS.

I’m not posting this on Anchor of Gold, because I don’t want to kick off in a swirl of negativity, but there are some things that have to be said and I’m going to say them now:

1) It’s time to consider the possibility that Jeffery Taylor isn’t going to happen. The only starter not to win SEC Player of the Week yet is showing no reason he should; the scoring load in conference play is being shouldered by Jenkins and Ezili. Taylor isn’t playing like the best player in the league; he’s not even the best player on his own team and he may not be the best player at his position. He needs to step up and lead this team and it isn’t happening.

2) Our guards can’t defend. Twice now we’ve given up ridiculous career nights to guys who should never have filled up the basket like that. Jenkins, Tinsley, Fuller – they aren’t slowing guys down, let alone stopping them.

3) I shudder to think where this team would be without Festus Ezili.

4) We lack adaptability. Against St. Mary’s and Mississippi State, we broke out the press and made it work – but not this weekend. We were able to run and gun a little better last week, but it didn’t happen today. If the other defense isn’t giving in to our strengths, we don’t seem to be able to play to their weaknesses and exploit them. And a lot of that goes to…

5) INJURY. This team’s strength was supposed to be a nine-man rotation and the ability to run teams into the ground with our depth. Instead, Andre Walker has played one game since December 1, and Steve Tcheingeng hasn’t played double-digit minutes since his foot injury. And then, today, Lance Golbourne goes down and doesn’t return, finishing with no points at all. Suddenly, we’re looking at a road game with a team that’s effectively six deep – of which two freshmen. Our roster of healthy regular upperclassmen is Jenkins, Ezili, Tinsley, and Taylor – and we’ve already established that Taylor isn’t doing what was expected of him.

This is as bad a situation for Vanderbilt as can be imagined. We are underachieving in a big way – the talent this team possesses isn’t showing up in the results on the court. The way they fall behind, the way they go cold at the end of the first half, the way they fumble away seemingly insurmountable leads – something’s wrong with this team from the ground up. And the time to fix it is running out.

So my laptop inexplicably shat the bed overnight Saturday. I went to bed with it running a backup and woke up Sunday morning to a completely dead and unresponsive brick. SMC reset did nothing, nor any amount of mucking with the battery, so it went to the Apple Store for a warranty fix, and in the meantime, I’m working with the house Mac mini, a borrowed iPad, and my phone. And so far, I’ve about concluded that if the choice is between an iPad and an 11″ MacBook Air, I have to take the air – simply because the iPad is no solution for Apple Remote Desktop or for serious blogging. Which may be a factor later on for reasons the last post may clarify.

Signed,
CDRE Stagger Lee

(crossposted from Anchor of Gold)

First, if you haven’t read Spencer Hall’s article, read it. I concur in every particular.

Done? Sweet. Now, an analogy (they’re those things on the SAT, for you non-Vandy SEC fans – you know, the SAT, the one harder than the ACT? Never mind):

Brett Favre:Mark McGwire::Jay Cutler:Barry Bonds.

Think about it. Favre is out there dragging around the field, playing progressively worse until finally being dragged off, and Minnesota”s out of contention – and each of his previous three seasons after “retiring” ended with a game-killing interception, usually in the playoffs – but because he’s a good ol’ boy and a gunslinger and like a kid having fun out there, he completely skates. Even after we all saw why he wears that jersey number. (Too soon?)

Meanwhile, here’s Jay Cutler with a grade-2 tear of the MCL – but because people don’t like his personality, he gets no benefit of the doubt. Actually, strike that – because people don’t like what they think is his personality. Problems with the coach in Denver? Jay’s a spoiled little whinebagger, and never mind that Denver fired Josh McDaniel once they realized that you can’t catch New England Patriots-ness like you would a cold. Cutler ineffective in Chicago? Never mind that Chicago led the league in sacks allowed this year, or that #6 already has one concussion on the season. Comes out of the NFC title game on a national stage? Well he must be a girly-man wimp, since he can obviously walk around, they should have to drag him bleeding off the field as he fights to grab his helmet and run back out there! Never mind that an MCL tear on a quarterback’s plant leg is basically an invitation to crumple in a heap, assuming you can stand up long enough to try to plant on it.

The NFL machine – the league, its amen corner on ESPN, and even some of the players, who haven’t wrapped their heads around what “union” means – have already made their decision. Jay Cutler is Not Their Kind Of Guy. And in the ultra-conservative, ultra-conformist, neo-Dickensian world of the NFL, that’s the worst mark a player can bear. Meanwhile, off we go with one alleged rapist in the Super Bowl and a convicted dogfighter in the Pro Bowl.

But Cutler’s the bad guy. Ah. OK.

Tell you what, all you muttonheads burning your jerseys in the Windy City – if you’re tired of our boy, why not consider releasing him? I’m sure there are at least a few teams that might like to take a chance. Speaking as a guy who has Redskins fandom the way other people have, say, herpes, I’d sign Cutler tonight with no hesitation at all. Because unlike the usual assortment of steroid freaks and has-beens on the Sabbath gasbag shows (Deion? DEION SANDERS thinks somebody’s soft? That’s like having Paris Hilton call you a slut), those of us who have actually seen #6 at work know the truth: if he ever had an O-line commensurate with his talent, Cutler would have some kind of ring already.

A little advice for the yuk-yuks on cable, and AM radio, and throughout the blogosphere: forget about what you “know” and try looking at what’s actually going on. You might be a little surprised. Meanwhile, I’ll be out somewhere raising a glass in my black-and-gold #6 jersey, because that’s our guy. I got his back.

(ETA: About ten minutes after I posted this, I got a message from the site admin, and…um…I’m on the front page of AoG and have been issued full front page posting privileges. Gulp. After 17 years, I’m a sportswriter again.)

(21) St. Mary’s 70

Vanderbilt 89

FINAL

Overcame a slow start, multiple runs, erratic officiating (to put it kindly), and some nontrivial injury issues to paste a ranked team. We needed that. Would have been a lot better if we’d beaten Tennessee last weekend, though…