Everybody gets paid today. \u00a0James Franklin’s contract is “torn up” according to Vice Chancellor David Williams, who always looks as if he should be sipping on 23-year-old Pappy Van Winkle neat while smoking a cigar the size of a telephone pole. \u00a0Details of the contract are not forthcoming, but it should be sufficient to ward off the rumormongering of other coaches while ensuring that Coach Franklin’s kids will be able to wake up Christmas morning and unwrap the GI Joe with the kung-fu grip.<\/p>\n
More to the point, everybody gets something. \u00a0Assistant coaches all get raises. \u00a0Players get a new indoor practice facility, built big and wide with resources for other teams as well – and all Vandy athletes get to chow down at the Magic Man’s new and improved dining hall. \u00a0Ticketholders get a new jumbotron and a complete review of the stadium situation with an eye toward all manner of improvements. \u00a0Hell, the money is echoing so loudly that former ‘Dore wideout Earl Bennett even got a 4-year $18M extension in Chicago.<\/p>\n
But most of all, Vanderbilt football fans get hope – the hope that goes with the biggest university commitment to the SEC’s flagship sport since the retirement of Dangerous Dan McGugin. \u00a0VCDW looked ready to wade into the crowd of media and start throwing punches as he flatly declared “We’re not talking about the past. \u00a0We’re building the damn thing.” \u00a0Coach himself was up there making the same pitch he made from day one – Ivy League education, SEC football, the city of Nashville and the opportunity to play right away – and you can almost see him looking straight at the likes of Gunner Kiel when he says it. \u00a0Come with us,<\/em> he says, and you can be part of the legend.<\/em><\/p>\n So will it work? Will the fans pack the house? \u00a0Will we sell out the bowl game and season tickets as requested? It’s tempting to think we could, but that dream is tempered by the experience of seeing a Stanford team, ranked in the top 6 with a Heisman-caliber QB and a BCS bowl berth already slotted, playing their last home game with tickets being handed out four-for-free to faculty, staff, students, and military – and not filling a 55,000 seat stadium for a conference foe.<\/p>\n I’m hoping Vanderbilt is different. \u00a0Sure, there’s also Nashville-based NFL ball, which honestly sucks up most of the footballing oxygen for non-alumni in the Bay Area, but Nashville is also in the heart of SEC country, where alumni status is the last thing you worry about in supporting a team. \u00a0Roll a successful squad out there for a couple of years in a football-crazed part of the world, and people are bound to at least pay attention, not least when coupled to the novelty of a top-20 academic school making top-20 football noise.<\/p>\n But there’ll be time enough to worry about that. \u00a0Twelve months ago, we found a ray of hope in the most hopeless place. \u00a0Now, in what should be the bleak midwinter, it’s raining nothing but sunshine.<\/p>\n Brand. New. Vanderbilt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Everybody gets paid today. \u00a0James Franklin’s contract is “torn up” according to Vice Chancellor David Williams, who always looks as if he should be sipping on 23-year-old Pappy Van Winkle neat while smoking a cigar the size of a telephone pole. \u00a0Details of the contract are not forthcoming, but it should be sufficient to ward … <\/p>\n