Honestly, it\u2019s like they moved the campus over top of an Indian burial ground while we weren\u2019t looking. \u00a0Now Eric McClellan is not with the team, leaving Vandy basketball down to seven scholarship players. \u00a0Couple that with the two walk-ons, and we no longer have enough live bodies to scrimmage 5-on-5. The real risk at this point is that guys will have to play so many minutes that injury starts to take a further toll, with long-term implications.<\/p>\n
And that has almost gone unnoticed because of the drama around James Franklin.<\/p>\n
Look, it\u2019s an unalloyed good that Vanderbilt has a coach so highly thought of that he\u2019s been explicitly named as a candidate for (deep breath) USC, Texas, Penn State, U of Washington, the Cleveland Browns, the Washington Redskins, possibly Louisville, possibly the Detroit Lions, and for all we know CEO of Microsoft (still vacant). \u00a0Plainly he is now the hottest thing in coaching, not impeded by his ubiquitous presence on ESPN\u2019s coverage of the last BCS championship game. \u00a0Vice Chancellor David Williams (heretofore referred to as the Goldfather, in the formulation of one particularly smartass Vandy blogger) has been one thousand percent vindicated in his choice of three years ago – not to deny candidate number one\u2019s credentials in getting Auburn from 3-9 to 1:30 from a national championship in one year. \u00a0But if we can\u2019t have Gus Malzahn, James Franklin is pretty good.<\/p>\n
Consider the numbers: we finished 6-7 the first year (by virtue of losing the bowl game), but all but two of those losses were by a single score. \u00a0The second year, we went 9-4 including a bowl win, 5 SEC wins, and our first home victory over Tennessee in 30 years in an utter blowout – our best overall record since 1915. \u00a0This year, despite losing our starters at QB and punter, our top DB, and the best running back in school history, we racked 9-4 again. \u00a0First back-to-back nine-win seasons ever. \u00a0First back-to-back wins over Tennessee wince 1926, in an epic come-from-behind road victory led by a QB with a brace protecting a torn ACL. First win over Florida since 1988, in the Swamp (where it was the first win since 1945). First appearance on SEC on CBS in twenty years. \u00a0First win on CBS in 30 years, another come-from-behind win over Georgia led by our then-third-string QB. \u00a0A 24-point lead in the bowl game at halftime, blown completely by the end of the third and finished with 17 unanswered points. \u00a0Vanderbilt has as many bowl wins since James Franklin arrived as they\u2019d accumulated from 1890 to 2010.<\/p>\n
And let\u2019s not understate this. \u00a0Since the establishment of the BCS in 1998, some of the teams that made it there include Purdue, Maryland, Georgia Tech, Utah, Pitt, Hawaii, Wake Forest, Baylor, UConn, Northern Illinois, Boise State, Central Florida, and of course Stanford, which clocked three Rose Bowls in that span. \u00a0Look further back, and since 1986, Duke\u2019s won an ACC title (under Steve Spurrier in 1990) and Cal\u2019s won a share of the Pac-10 title (in 2006) and Tulane\u2019s had a 12-0 season (in 1998) and Northwestern\u2019s been to the Rose Bowl twice. \u00a0That\u2019s all<\/em> in the 25 year span from 1986 to 2010.<\/p>\n And in that entire stretch of time, Vanderbilt\u2019s best<\/em> regular season record was 6-6. \u00a0Once<\/em>. \u00a0They went to one<\/em> bowl game, that very year in 2008, all of four miles away from campus in their same town, and won 16-14 in a game where their punter was MVP. Hell, they won a whopping five<\/em> games twice in a four-year span from 1991-94, and it was a good enough record for LSU to poach away Gerry Dinardo as head coach.<\/p>\n Fans around the country can moan and weep and point at their collective futility over time, but no one – no one<\/em> – enjoyed a longer stretch of uninterrupted despair in college football than the Vanderbilt Commodores. \u00a0And it was that perennial basket case, that tire fire, that toxic waste dump of a program that James Franklin has delivered to back-to-back 9-win seasons with bowl victories and triumph over the archrival\u2026in a span of three seasons.<\/p>\n And he\u2019s only turning 42 years old on Groundhog Day. If you are an athletic director or general manager with a head coaching vacancy, and you don\u2019t at least call down to Nashville and make an inquiry, you\u2019re probably too stupid to be running a football program. \u00a0Not<\/em> to be chasing James Franklin would be an act of professional malpractice.<\/p>\n But.<\/p>\n It\u2019s really hit the Kubler-Ross stages in order, let\u2019s face it:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n 1) DENIAL. \u201cHe\u2019s not going anywhere. He\u2019s got a contract. He\u2019s made commitments to these players. It would fly in the face of his whole entire shtick if he left now. The NFL isn\u2019t going to hire a guy with only three years\u2019 head coaching experience, especially all in college.”<\/p>\n 2) ANGER. \u201cFuck you for assuming we\u2019re a stepping stone. \u00a0Fuck you for assuming everybody\u2019s dying to leave Vanderbilt for a real job. \u00a0Fuck you for treating us like an afterthought when we\u2019re out there kicking your ass on the field and in recruiting. Fuck you, fuck you, FUCK YOU.”<\/p>\n 3) BARGAINING. \u201cIt\u2019s got to be a leverage thing. If we commit to building a new stadium, if we get the Board of Trustees on board and break ground already, if we just prove that we\u2019re serious about this and it\u2019s not a flash in the pan the way they treated it when Steve Sloan was here or when we lucked into bowls in 1982 and 2008, he\u2019ll stick around.”<\/p>\n 4) DEPRESSION. \u201cHe\u2019s gone. We are so fucked. The dream is dead. Normal service will now be restored. We can never have nice things. \u00a0God hates Vanderbilt.”<\/p>\n 5) ACCEPTANCE…<\/p>\n \u2026you know, the thing about Vanderbilt football, when you get to stage 5 it\u2019s basically the same as stage 4.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The thing I\u2019m worried about is this: even if he is coming back, the whole strung-out process, the trauma, the fans losing their minds every hour of every day\u2026that\u2019s the sort of thing that maybe you come back from, maybe you don\u2019t. I worry that this is going to poison the fan base at a time when we need that fan base alive and active and fired up – and that the whole protracted saga is going to soak up and absorb and nullify any momentum from a triumphant weekend in Birmingham and another top-25 finish. \u00a0It\u2019s like calling off the engagement without ending the relationship – maybe you get back there, but maybe you don\u2019t.<\/p>\n And the other problem is that we went through this last year. \u00a0Not to the same extent, but we did go through it (and hell, we even went through a little of it after that first 6-7 year, because 6 wins at Vanderbilt is enough to make other folks come calling. \u00a0Or was.) \u00a0If he returns next year, and if McCrary or Carta-Samuels the Younger is a stud at QB, and if the young guns in the secondary come through, and if the senior-heavy offensive line can pave the way for a stable of talented running backs, and Vanderbilt somehow breaks through a down SEC to win 10 games and play on New Year\u2019s Eve or New Years\u2019 Day\u2026how much louder is the clamoring going to get?<\/p>\n And make no mistake, no contract will ever stop the clamoring. ESPN\u2019s got Franklin\u2019s bags already packed for State College, once they unpacked them from Austin. Every other school has spent two years telling recruits \u201cDon\u2019t go to Vanderbilt because Franklin won\u2019t be there for long.\u201d If we\u2019re always waiting for the other shoe to drop, that will affect casual fans, it will affect donors, it will create a cloud of doubt that will act as a drag on the program until the day James Franklin finally leaves and the rest of the world gets to bellow a triumphant \u201cTOLD YOU SO\u201d to a crushed fan base in black and gold. \u00a0Or until Vanderbilt swoons back to five wins\u2026and the same thing happens.<\/p>\n Honestly, there\u2019s no solution. Franklin could come back, announce he\u2019s going to leave Nashville only in a pine box, win a national championship, and people will be saying that now he\u2019s sure<\/em> to leave Vandy for a real program. \u00a0And at no point has Franklin said a single thing that points to him leaving\u2026but then, right now he hasn\u2019t said anything that clearly<\/em> points to him staying either. \u00a0And because we\u2019re Vanderbilt, we\u2019re expecting the worst. \u00a0We\u2019re Charlie Brown lining up to kick the football, we\u2019re Wile E. Coyote trusting that this shipment from Acme will finally be the one that gets the job done, we\u2019re the eternal schlimazel of college football waiting for the soup to get spilled in our lap.<\/p>\n Maybe our lot in life will change. \u00a0But it isn\u2019t going to be this offseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Honestly, it\u2019s like they moved the campus over top of an Indian burial ground while we weren\u2019t looking. \u00a0Now Eric McClellan is not with the team, leaving Vandy basketball down to seven scholarship players. \u00a0Couple that with the two walk-ons, and we no longer have enough live bodies to scrimmage 5-on-5. The real risk at … <\/p>\n