Are my eyes really blue?

I have a couple or three topics to write on, but they all deserve more attention than I can give them at 8 PM on a Sunday night.  Maybe tomorrow I can gin something up.  In the meantime, I’m working on my playlists and my wish list.  It’s amazing what an optimistic turn the music takes when Vandy is headed for a bowl (although I don’t think I appreciated the fact in 2008 that we actually went .500 in conference).  It’s also noteworthy that my age-old plan – win all four non-conf games plus Ole Miss and Kentucky and that’s Big Six – worked out exactly like that this year.

As for presents this year, I don’t know – I pretty much have everything I need and there aren’t many things I want.  Maybe a new pair of boots, definitely some Brooks Brothers Vandy gear, that watch I’ve been eyeing (although that might make a more appropriate thing for my 40th birthday, come to think of it) – to be honest, all I want for Christmas in 2011 is as happy a Christmas season as I had in 2008.  I definitely feel more optimistic about the football than I did then – you can read the post and see that I didn’t feel we’d turned the corner – and I’m happier with the iPhone as an all-everything solution than I was then (although long-form text entry is still a bugaboo, and ESPN3 has been added to that).  And I did break down and buy more outerwear – that was the December I acquired “Vandy III”, my old reliable Columbia soft-shell.

One thing’s for sure – the netbook desire of 2008 has been quashed for good and turned into notional-iPad-3 desire…

We didn’t buy in at first.

You can go back through the archives of the Vanderbilt blogosphere in December 2010 and see that we were…less than enthusiastic about the hiring of James Franklin.  Much of the disappointment, obviously, stemmed from the thought that we had (allegedly) thrown $21 million over 7 years at Gus Malzahn and been turned down, and some of it stemmed from the apparent lack of success in recent years for Maryland.  I knew Friedgen was on the way out, thanks to my DC pals, and the fact that they flaked on Franklin’s head-coach-in-waiting deal was discouraging.  There were questions about play-calling, there were questions about recruiting, and there was a general sense of malaise over the fact that once again, we went out and got somebody else’s coordinator instead of a known good proven BCS-conference coach.

What a difference a year makes.

From the first press conference, it looked like we had a winner.  From his first recruiting haul, it was apparent that he knew how to bring guys into the fold.  And tonight, at 6-6 in his first year, the most successful new Vanderbilt football coach in generations, it looks like James Franklin can coach.

Yes, we were 6-6 in 2008.  But this is a very different team.  We won in 2008 by playing teams close, no penalties, no turnovers, and just hanging around for sixty minutes.  When we won, we won close, and when we lost, we lost ugly.  This year, five of our six wins were by three touchdowns or more. Read that sentence again.  In our six losses, four were lost by a margin of six points or less. Read that sentence again.  Now consider this: one catch against Georgia, one fumble not lost against Arkansas, one field goal made and one of theirs missed at Florida, and one field goal made at Tennessee, and this team finishes the regular season 10-2, 6-2 in the conference, and – on the tiebreak – SEC East champion with a game next week against LSU.

This team, in one season, with almost the same players as last year, was five plays away from the SEC Championship Game.

Vice-Chancellor David Williams, it is said, was dialed in on James Franklin from the beginning.  And he was questioned for it.  In the cold light of midnight, it has to be said: his judgement is impeccable.

Well, a side trip to Best Buy on Wednesday yielded up a second Kindle Fire on a back display that was NOT in “display only” mode.  More remarkably, the Wi-Fi was on and working and connected.  So I was able to actually take a pass at the web browser and see what’s doing.

It’s tough to make a solid evaluation in five minutes, but the browser seems to be within acceptable parameters.  It didn’t blow me away or anything, but it didn’t drag excessively or struggle with my usual array of websites.  There were a couple of rendering errors, but those were readily attributable to the ad-blocking on the in-store network.

The thing I keep coming back to is the lack of radio options – no Bluetooth (so no cheating with a keyboard for text input), no GPS (so no reliable mapping software), and no 3G (so stuck with whatever Wi-Fi is on offer).  What you have at that point is a slightly larger color display – which might be fine in conjunction with an iPhone as a larger reader, except that I already have the regular Kindle for reading purposes.  And the availability of e-ink for battery life and contrast/readability means that I would be on very thin ice to justify making a run at a Fire when I know that a notional iPad 3 would almost certainly serve me as a personal-laptop replacement.

I think I’ll withhold judgement on the Fire until after the holiday season so we can see what the long-tern performance is like (I especially want to see how buggy the fork of Android 2.3 is or isn’t).  But for now, it’s still not for me – I think the final sweet spot is still going to be 32 GB 3G-capable iPad for $730 rather than 4GB/128GB 11″ MBA for $1150.

Well, if I had to pare it down, it boils down to:

1) Cuz and Blue Tarp, the relatives who are actually family, and who have now lived with us for four months.  It’s not going to last, because they’ll need their own place in the city, but for now I’m going to milk it for all it’s worth – family dinner, cocktail hours, and an infusion of youth and enthusiasm that we’re glad to mooch from.

2) Anchor of Gold, the Vanderbilt SBNation blog that gave me a spot on the masthead and made me a sportswriter for the first time in seventeen years.  And while I’m at it, Vanderbilt athletics generally, for making the leap in multiple sports.  College World Series, top-ten basketball, and now a football team on the way up.

3) Apple products, which have given me a living ever since washing out of grad school.

4) ‘Er indoors, who brings home the bacon AND fries it up in the pan.  Love you, sugar.

5) I’m exceptionally thankful for the fact that we’re not going to be getting on a plane this holiday season.  For many reasons.

I say part i because it never really happened.  In fact, I don’t know how it came to be that I was only cognizant of the night before Thanksgiving as “National Throw Back Drinks With Your Old Friends Before Enduring Your Relatives Night.”  Now, something of the sort did transpire (famously) in 1994, but my memory being what it is, I tend to remember it more being Christmas than Thanksgiving.

But my mind being sort of retrojective anyway, I can fill in the gaps myself.  I know there was a hockey game at least once, with drinks in the hotel bar across the street after with players.  I know there probably would have been a movie at some point, preferably something laugh-your-ass-off-ish a la The Naked Gun or similar.  Then something to drink, which in the mid-90s would have probably meant the Garages, a decade before it turned up in the New York Times.

Now?  If the deed were being done, I’d almost surely insist on Dram, the whiskey bar in Mountain View that actually has a huge selection of bourbons broken down by Kentucky county (along with bacon infusions).  I’d also need my designated driver for sure, because it’s not like fifteen years ago where a mid-20s metabolism polished off the alcohol of two bottles of Jack Daniels Amber Lager almost as fast as I could drink it.  Or maybe the XYZ bar in the Aloft hotel in Homewood.  Or hell, maybe the very nice cocktail options at Little Savannah.  That thing with allspice syrup and a stout reduction was amazing.

The evening’s entertainment otherwise?  Almost certainly Bottletree, which appears to be ground zero for the kind of entertainment we would have killed for when I was a permanent resident of the 205.  A couple of beers and the spectacle of Open Mic Night would probably be in order.

And of course, in spirit if nothing else, there ought to be a table at a certain pub in Cleveland Park the night before Thanksgiving, with the Wolfe Tones and McTeggarts and 40 Thieves and (of course) Springsteen and Petty and ABBA on the jukebox, before we get scattered to Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Virginia and New York and Chicago and California and Alabama and God only knows where else.

But right now, I guess I’m just grateful that my foot won’t touch an airplane gangplank again in 2011.

OK, I’m going to take a break from “to hell with the SEC” long enough to discuss something else.  What else?  Mobile technology.

So when Google launched the Nexus One, there was – infamously – nowhere to see it in person.  There was a Flash animation on the website that you could hold your hand up to (I am 100% serious this is not a joke), but if you wanted to see one in person, your choices were down to either ordering one or finding somebody who already had it.  It didn’t last very long, and when the Nexus S replaced the One, Google didn’t make the same mistake again – the Nexus S was available at Best Buy.

Now the second revision of the Chromebook is out – and once again, the same mistake.  If you want to see a Chromebook, your options are apparently fourfold:

1) Buy one

2) Find someone who bought one

3) Check one out on the SFO-JFK route on Virgin America airways

4) Visit the Samsung Experience store in New York City

 

Google has been taken to task elsewhere for this, and rightly so – the target market for these machines isn’t in New York City flying Virgin or throwing $300 blindly for a new gadget.  The Chromebook needs to be in Target, in Wal-Mart, in Sears, and yes, in Best Buy – which inexplicably sells them through the website but not in store.

Which in turn leads us to the Kindle Fire, which I finally saw in person on Saturday.  Naturally, my first instinct was to test the web browser, so I tapped “Web” which brought up what appeared to be some sort of glasses-shopping website…and a movie clip overlay, extolling the virtues of the browser.  And as soon as the movie finished, the Fire closed everything gracefully and sent me back to the “bookshelf” launcher screen.

I tried everything I could to pause the movie, skip it, interrupt it – but there was no means by which I could get to the web browser to, you know, actually use it.  And my first instinct is the same as a movie reviewer who doesn’t get to preview a film before release: how big a dog is this if you’re not allowed to field-test it?  Make no mistake, the reviewers have not heaped praise on the browser’s speed, despite the back-end proxy that’s supposed to handle everything but display rendering – so couple that with the “demo movie” replacement for actual, you know, browsing, and my first instinct is, red flag.  Rightly so, I think.

(Not that it would necessarily help.  Best Buy tends to set out a lot of tablets and then forget to make sure the wireless is working.)

Here you see the genius of Ron Johnson (and Steve Jobs through him) in the Apple Store – here’s an environment where you can actually see all the products.  Pick them up, poke them, use them.  There are messages in the mail client, songs on the iPods, apps on the iPads, live Wi-Fi so you can actually check out websites.  Hell, you can pick up the iPhones and FaceTime back and forth.

People can go on a website if they want to buy a pig in a poke.  If somebody comes into a store to look at the product, it stands to reason they want to get more of an evaluation than they could get by looking at Flash movies online.

“Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.”

-Hanlon’s Razor

 

“Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.”

-Gray’s Law

 

“On the last play of the Vanderbilt-Tennessee game, in overtime, the Tennessee defender intercepted the pass, his knee did not touch the ground and he returned the interception for a touchdown. During the play, the head linesman incorrectly ruled that the Tennessee player’s knee was down when he intercepted the pass by blowing his whistle and giving the dead ball signal. The play was reviewed as if there was no whistle on the field, and as a result, overturned the incorrect ruling. By rule, if there was a whistle blown, the play is not reviewable.”

-Steve Shaw, SEC Coordinator of Officials

 

So.

 

If I understand correctly, the sequence of events went like this:

1) Jordan Rodgers threw his third pick (and fourth turnover) of the game.  Make no mistake, we lost this game because of turnovers, not officiating.  Explaining why we lost is not the point of this exercise.

2) The Tennessee defender was hit, but did not go down, and took off running.

3) The head linesman blew the play dead and pointed at the ground, by which point the Tennessee player and his convoy had long since headed for the end zone.

4) Derek Dooley did *not* challenge the ruling on the field, believing that the whistle was not reviewable.  (I am going here by what I remember from his postgame remarks, but I recall him being defensive about this fact and desiring to explain to the fans at the time that the reason he wasn’t challenging was because it wasn’t a reviewable play.)

5) The play was reviewed, it was determined that the knee was in fact not down, and the touchdown stood.

So what we have here is a case where an official screwed up by blowing a whistle when he shouldn’t have.  At that point, the officiating crew made the decision to review a call that, by rule, is not reviewable.

Again, I am not saying the officiating cost us the game.  The outcome was what should have happened to begin with, were the play called with no errors.  So let’s not act like we’re trying to make excuses for the loss with this.  The point is this: if the officials can ignore rules to cover their own mistakes, how much confidence do you have in their officiating the rest of the way?

The one thing that can be said with certainty: if the rumblings are true that the linesman denied blowing the whistle, he should never set foot in an SEC stadium again.

1) We got the yips. We were too damn tight, we let the world talk us up, and we lost our shit.

2) I don’t like throwing a kid under the train, but Jelesky needs to run stairs until he vomits. Preferably before being allowed on the bus home tonight. We’re going to get a reputation and we’re going to deserve it. Cut. That. Shit. Out.

3) Yes, by rule the running-into-the-kicker call is correct. If this is LSU-Alabama, or Florida-Georgia, or the like, that flag doesn’t fly.  Which is doubly ironic considering that by rule, an inadvertent whistle is not reviewable.  Right up until it is.  Which is why…

4) The officiating in this game was a war crime. I’m not even talking about biased officiating – I’m talking about the sheer incompetence that goes along with calling a guy down who wasn’t down, blowing a whistle, and then dicking around for several minutes before finally deciding to cover up a mistake by either ignoring the rules or ignoring what happened. The SEC has surpassed the Pac-12 for officials who look like their first reaction to a rulebook is to color in it, and it’s an embarrassment to have that on the field in what is supposedly the best conference in football.

We had it, we gave it away. I’m not depressed, I’m not despairing, I’m just angrier than I’ve ever been after a loss.  Memo to the UT fans who are acting like they’re the national champions after beating a .500 team to pull within half a game of the ‘Dores in the SEC East: congrats.  I’m pleased that you’re so happy to be Auburn six days a week and Vanderbilt on Saturday.

We are getting there. We will get there. But we are not there yet.

Of which more later.

OK, let’s start with the obvious.  In the grand scheme of things, this game does not matter at all.  The sun will rise in the morning.  War will rage on in Somalia, Tibet will still be under the thumb of Red China, my house will still be standing irrespective of the result of events in Knoxville.

Add to this the following caveat: there is nothing I can do to affect this game.  Maybe if I’m there in the stands, I can contribute to the extra bit of noise or the one random shriek that causes a false start, or I contribute to the yell that rallies the spirits of our offense, or otherwise have some infinitely small impact on events.  But I’m over two thousand miles away, and I know intellectually that nothing I do – watch, don’t watch, play the stream on the radio instead, wear this shirt or that hat, sit here, stand there, drink this, hold my head a certain way, mumble the same things at every snap – nothing makes one tiny bit of difference.  Unless you are prepared to believe in the existence of a deity that takes an interest in the prayers of college football partisans and acts in the affirmative on their behalf, the fact of the matter is clear: there is the outcome of the game, and the influence I have on that outcome, and the Venn diagram of the two looks like a stripper’s fake tits.

Nick Hornby, in Fever Pitch, goes on at length about smoking goals in, or not smoking, or wearing this shirt or not listening to the radio or this or that – indeed, he describes a ridiculous ritual where he and his friends go to the sweet shop, buy sugar mice, bite the heads off, and throw the rest into the street as some sort of bizarre votive offering – because it worked once.  I have broken myself of all manner of Rain Man-esque behaviors at Cal games, though to be honest, it mostly stems from the failing fortunes of the team and my resulting diminished emotional engagement.  I myself almost drank myself blackout drunk one night because Vanderbilt was playing better against then-#1 Tennessee when I drank bourbon than when I drank Guinness.  I came within an eyelash of burning my apartment down in 2001 because Alabama was pounding Auburn relentlessly whenever I had my pipe going, and the fug of tobacco smoke was all the way down from ceiling to ankles.

This sort of thing doesn’t happen when you have abject confidence in the results.  If you know you suck, you don’t get enmeshed in all this.  If you know you’re going to win, you don’t have to bother.  It’s only when the result teeters on the edge of a knife, when things are close to perfectly balanced, that your mind starts to go to these places.  And when it’s perfectly balanced – Tennessee is at home, but Vandy is a 1.5 point favorite, the records are within a game of each other, we’re on an uptrend but they have the better physical talent, we’re healthier but they defend the run and the pass equally well, we keep allowing touchdowns in the final minute of the first half but they haven’t scored a point in the second half for over a month–

When things are so precariously perfectly even, and when you have an emotional investment in the team, it seems like anything – no matter how small, no matter how stupid, no matter how logically irrelevant – anything that might take that elephant on the head of a pin and tip its balance…well, if you can do it, you have to, right?

Last night, I tried to assuage my anxieties by looking at last year’s posts on Anchor of Gold around the time of the hire.  And what I saw was remarkable in retrospect…

 

Maybe this is realistic, maybe not, but here’s what I want to see:

Season one: more than two wins.
Season two: not less than 5 wins (including, by definition, at least one conference win)
Season three: not less than 6 wins (which would assume a bowl since they hand those out like candy now)
Season four: not less than 7 wins AND a bowl bid outside the 615 area code.
Season five: all of season four PLUS at least one big-ticket win over the Penitentiary of Tennessee, or some big-ticket foe like Florida or Alabama that we haven’t beaten in years.

 

If we win out the rest of the way, this season, we will hit my goal for season five.  This year.  Even if we were to lose everything the rest of the way and finish 5-7, as disappointing as that is, we’ve met the goal through season 2 a year ahead of schedule.

Ultimately, I suppose that’s all you can do.  Step back, take a look at what you have, and be thankful for it.  And whatever happens, happens.

I guess about eight hours from now, we’ll know how it worked out.

Anchor Down.  Sink the Vols.

One…two…three…four…five…six.  Six seconds, on average, from the snap of the ball to the official’s whistle to end the play.

On the sidelines, at the beginning of every quarter, you’ll see the Vanderbilt coaching staff and players holding up six fingers.  It’s nothing to do with the number of wins for a bowl, or the memory of Jay Cutler – it’s a reminder.  Six seconds.  Nothing about the game, nothing about the scoreboard, nothing about the bowl prospects.  No looking ahead, no looking back.  Nothing in the world matters but the next six seconds.

Right about the time I was leaving Vanderbilt for the last time, Mary Schmich was writing a soon-to-be-famous column in the Chicago Tribune that included the line: “Don’t worry about the future.  Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.”  Needless to say, Coach James Franklin has refined that down even further – every time the guys hit the field, there’s no thought of “what if we can’t stop them on this drive?” or “we need two touchdowns to make up the difference.”  Just one play.  Execute yours, stop theirs.  Six seconds.

Ironic that the number should be six.  If you look at the archetypal personalities in the Enneagram, the Six is one who seeks security and support, and lives in fear of being without support and guidance.  Anxiety and worry are the stock in trade for the Six.  If there’s one thing a Six will struggle with more than anything else, it’s the worrying, the fretting, the abiding dread of “what if?”

Coach has fixed that: ignore it.  Shut it out.  Do your job without worrying about how it will turn out, or worrying what could go wrong – just one hundred percent effort, six seconds at a time.  Don’t worry about six wins.  Don’t worry about six years since beating your arch-rival.  Don’t worry about the fact that this would only be the second such win since 1982. Don’t worry about the letdown next week against Wake.  Don’t think about the lack of a single road win all year.  Don’t think about the Vegas line making you the favorite on the road for the first time in decades in this matchup. Don’t think about the twelve times you’ve come into this game with five wins.  Don’t think about having lost all twelve.  Don’t think about the letdown in the last minute yielding a touchdown again.  Don’t think about whether their QB will come back and be 100% and throw darts all day. Don’t think about anything other than the matter at hand.  Focus on what’s in front of you, right this very instant, and do your absolute best. Then do it again.

Embrace the moment.  Be here now. Life is the next six seconds.

Go Dores.  Beat the Vols.