Cory Batey. \u00a0Caleb Azubike. \u00a0And Brian Kimbrow, by some accounts the top high school football prospect in the state of Tennessee. \u00a0And then, late the same night, Jaydrick Declouet of Louisiana jumps on the pile. \u00a0In one day, as many top prospects as Vanderbilt would get for years. \u00a0Twelve – TWELVE – commits for next season. \u00a0Some of the top talent in Tennessee and Georgia alike. \u00a0And in Kimbrow, a burner with 4.2 speed rated by some services as the second-best all-purpose back in the nation.<\/p>\n
In. The. Nation.<\/p>\n
It’s been almost fifty years since Art Guepe said “There is no way you can be Harvard Monday through Friday and be Alabama on Saturday.” \u00a0The last Vanderbilt coach to win a bowl game (before Bobby Johnson in 2008) wasn’t bitter, supposedly, but matter-of-fact about the incompatibility of top-ten academics and top-ten football.<\/p>\n
And Coach James Franklin has said, in a word, bullshit<\/em>.<\/p>\n His pitch to the kids, supposedly, is “why not?” Why not play the best football in the country and get a top-10 education to boot? \u00a0Other coaches are warning you how tough the academics are – do they think you’re not smart enough? \u00a0You can get an Ivy-caliber degree and you can play on an SEC football team right away – would you rather sit on the bench for years at Auburn or Tennessee, where you can be good, or would you rather come to Vanderbilt, where you can play right away, get a killer degree, and have a shot at becoming immortal?<\/em><\/p>\n The trick, obviously, is keeping the commitments through National Signing Day in February. \u00a0A lot can happen. \u00a0But I suspect that a lot of the kids from this year’s class – the Josh Gradys and Lafonte Thorogoods – will get a ton of playing time, and the current kids will see that Coach Franklin is serious about building the talent behind them, and he will point to how quickly that school in Palo Alto went from 1-10 to the Orange Bowl. \u00a0And Kimbrow has already said his word is good, and he’s not taking any more visits.<\/p>\n The most amazing part, to me, is that Tennessee is officially running scared – we now have triple as many kids in the fold as they do, and their fans are freaking out. \u00a0All of a sudden, we’re getting the kind of message board abuse that was usually directed at Florida or Alabama. \u00a0And the screams of the haters are…magical.<\/p>\n Is this real? \u00a0This can’t be real.<\/p>\n Other conferences have something else. \u00a0The Big East was built on basketball from day one. \u00a0The ACC became so. \u00a0The Pac-10 was known for playing every sport there was, especially Olympic sports. \u00a0But the SEC has always been about football. \u00a0Three teams can hit the College World Series and finish 1-2-3 in the nation, Kentucky can be one of the great powers of basketball, the Lady Vols can rule women’s hoops, but all of that is secondary in the Southeastern Conference, where you are judged in your very essence on your football team.<\/p>\n And make no mistake, we have been terrible. \u00a0Absolutely terrible. \u00a0The competitive era ended around the time that Coach Guepe packed it in, and in five decades you could count the bowl bids on one hand (and the bowl wins on one finger). \u00a00-for-SEC records? \u00a0Common. \u00a0Blowouts by five or six touchdowns? \u00a0Frequent. \u00a0Seasons measured on how often we managed to cover the spread on a ranked opponent? \u00a0Standard.<\/p>\n We don’t take recruits away from Tennessee, or Notre Dame, or Stanford. \u00a0It just doesn’t happen. \u00a0Our guys turn down Columbia or Tulane or Western Kentucky to play football in the West End. \u00a0We get a thrill in our heart to have a couple of three-star players in the recruiting class. \u00a0Even the success is touched with tragedy, as in the case of Rajaan Bennett (RIP), the five-star running back who never lived to set foot on campus as a student.<\/p>\n We’re a doormat. \u00a0We’re a disaster area. \u00a0Duke can win an ACC title, and Northwestern can go to the Rose Bowl, and Stanford and Georgia Tech can play in Orange Bowls, but it doesn’t happen for us. \u00a0We don’t get the talent, we don’t get the breaks, we don’t belong in the SEC.<\/p>\n But that’s not what’s happening.<\/p>\n It could be us.<\/em> We could win games. \u00a0We could win bowls. \u00a0We could be ranked. \u00a0We could take what happened in the first half of 2008 and make it real and make it regular. \u00a0We could make people nervous about playing Vanderbilt, and not because they might overlook us.\u00a0We could prove we deserve to be in the SEC.<\/p>\n Maybe it will all go to hell. \u00a0Maybe we’ll be 0-8 by November and everything will be falling apart. \u00a0Maybe it’ll be back to “Same Old Vandy” and we’ll look back at this summer and kick ourselves for being delusional.<\/p>\n But maybe not. \u00a0I want to believe. \u00a0And now it’s possible…<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cory Batey. \u00a0Caleb Azubike. \u00a0And Brian Kimbrow, by some accounts the top high school football prospect in the state of Tennessee. \u00a0And then, late the same night, Jaydrick Declouet of Louisiana jumps on the pile. \u00a0In one day, as many top prospects as Vanderbilt would get for years. \u00a0Twelve – TWELVE – commits for next … <\/p>\n