Author: Stagger Lee

(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…

For some reason, January always makes me think of snow. Or at least very cold. All the way back to 1982, when we had snow for four days and got out of school. (It was clear by Friday…which was a scheduled inclement weather day, so no school for a week. Yay Alabama!) It was cold and dreary and rained as often as not.

Twenty years ago, January meant an interim term class on magazine writing – based around The New Yorker. I would wake up around 7:30 to 10,000 Maniacs on the CD player (Hope Chest, if I remember right), pour some coffee into the 4-cup coffemaker I’d gotten for Christmas, tie on the 3/4-height Nike cross-trainers (also for Christmas), and hike up three flights of stairs in the second-oldest building on campus. As it turns out, working in the style of The New Yorker was remarkable preparation for blogging – I had to do a feature piece, a movie review, a couple of Talk of the Town items, a little bit of everything. I was intrigued by the ads, of all things – I didn’t know what a single-malt scotch was until I saw the Macallan ad. I wound up subscribing to the magazine – a subscription I carried for 20 years before giving it up in favor of…a Kindle-based subscription.

Needless to say, an interim class on campus adds up to a lot of free time. January of ’91 is the first time I bought a bartending book, thinking I should learn to drink properly if I was to imbibe alcohol. (It didn’t take, largely because when you’re an undergrad you don’t have the money or legal purchasing power to drink well. One more reason to change the alcohol policy in America.) It was also when Desert Shield finally turned into Desert Storm, and the draft-nervous males over 18 started pouring everything into a glass (I think the “Air Raid” was Dr Pepper, Bacardi, Canadian Mist, some sort of creme de menthe stuff and berry-tinged mineral water). After all, Iraq was still sporting the fourth largest army in the world, undefined chemical weapons capabilities, short-range ballistic missiles, and we honestly had no idea what a post-Cold War shooting war would look like.

If I’m honest, it’s about that time I should have been working on dumping my first college girlfriend, rather than staying with her another two and a half years. Hell, she didn’t even like basketball, and I wasn’t yet in the pep band, so getting to games was a bit tricky. On the bright side, we were still on the punch system for meal plans, and the soda fountain in the cafeteria was free to just walk up to and fill your glass. I switched to a 32 oz carry model almost instantly.

Later Januarys would be more interesting – 1992 was spent mostly in post-Communist Central Europe, 1995 in a light dusting of snow in Nashville while watching college hockey, 1998 on Appalachian interstates with snow up the hills and a new AT&T phone in one hand, 2001 on a snow-covered lawn with my new crush object, 2007 at the pinnacle of my Apple career hanging out in the company booth at MacWorld, or 2009 kicking off a new job and returning to train commuting. But looking back, 1991 was something of a cusp. The fork in the road appeared, and I didn’t take it.

Lesson learned.

Although it’s something I’ve been eyeing for over a decade, and at some point you just have to pull the trigger – so once I gave in on the peacoat, this was inevitable…

The one I originally looked at was a Stocker and Yale model, but this one is by Traser, a Swiss company specializing in tritium-based illumination for watches. Illumination is based on phosphorescent material stimulated by tritium gas, with a half-life of 12.5 years (the illumination is only warrantied for ten, though) and the watch bits are a quartz movement with a battery life of 4 to 5 years. And it’s waterproof enough for the shower, so I’m hoping this will take care of the whole one-watch-for-everything daily wear. After all, ten years would be longer than any watch in my current rotation, and if I’m changing the tubes out at age 49 or 50 I would say I’ve gotten my money’s worth from it. (I don’t actually have the money, but that should be coming soon if I get my incentive money for getting healthy…)

And it definitely works clearly at 3:30 and 5 AM, and I know this for a fact after last night.