The final score doesn’t matter. It was a triple-stomach-punch of a game, literally – Jordan Matthews threw up his hydration all over the field and still came back to clock 178 total yards – and it was as close and compelling as you could have asked for. If you weren’t on the losing end, it was an amazing game. Plenty of Ole Miss fans turned up on Anchor of Gold to rave about how incredibly lucky they were and what an amazing game Vandy played and how they got away with one and otherwise be reasonably gracious in victory, which is why the rivalry doesn’t have the same sort of venom as some others.
No, the problem isn’t the Rebels, it’s the rest of the world. You know, the ones who are circulating pictures of the stadium a half hour before the game and mocking the “sea of red” and empty seats, despite a completely packed student section – and, you know, the inability to see any of the other side of the stadium where the season ticket holders are. The ones who, five minutes after an amazing Vandy comeback, three minutes after a shattering reversal of fortune and one minute after a heartbreaking tip-pick, dismiss the whole thing with “that’s why your [sic] Vandy”. The SEC officials who threw a flag on “pass interference” that nobody could find in an amazing coverage job by Vandy’s all-SEC corner, and the ones who didn’t throw a flag on similarly tight coverage when it went the other way. Naturally, the PI penalty kept a touchdown drive alive for Ole Miss. But nope, “same old Vandy.”
Which is true from one standpoint: no matter how hard our team works, no matter how many changes our coaches make, no matter how much we pack the stadium, no matter how many new facilities we build, no matter how many four-star recruits take up the black and gold, no matter how many potential NFL stars come back for a senior year – no matter what actually happens, the same narrative will always be applied. Perpetual cellar dweller, bunch of nerds who can’t get out of their own way, not really an SEC team, a guaranteed win every time out even if they’ve beaten you three in a row and five of the last six.
If you want credit, you should have gone to SunTrust.
The thing is – we’re actually a damn good school with a damn good athletic program. The baseball team is a legit national power. The basketball team, when we can enough players to scrimmage five-on-five, has done some great things. Hell, women’s cross-country won an SEC title a few years back and women’s bowling (no, really) is a national power with a national championship in 2007 to their credit. Our alumni clocked back-to-back Nobel Peace Prizes a few years back.
But we’re in the SEC. None of that matters. Not to a conference full of borderline-illiterate Finebaum callers who never set foot on a college campus in their lives without a ticket in hand. The SEC is about one thing and one thing only, and never mind that Florida was a dumpster fire of football before Spurrier and so was South Carolina, and that Ole Miss hasn’t done too much since integration, and that even mighty Alabama racked exactly one national title between 1980 and 2008 – no, Vandy hasn’t been good for years, so therefore Vandy can never be any good and will never change and cannot possibly improve in any way.
What we do doesn’t really belong in the SEC. The things that are supposed to make you a great school don’t fit with this conference. Logically, the only thing to do is leave and try to get situated somewhere that actually credits the things you hold important, someplace where you actually fit in with the values and aspirations of those around you, someplace where you don’t spend your entire life as a freak just because that’s all you can be in that place.
Boy, that escalated fast, didn’t it?