It shouldn\u2019t bother me this much, and I\u2019m happy for him, but\u2026it kind of sucks. \u00a0Herb Hand, perhaps the most social-media-savvy of all college football assistant coaches, apparently shot an episode of Chopped last summer and it will air in a month or two. \u00a0At the time, he was the offensive line coach of Vandy, and apparently was all in his star-V gear and everything. \u00a0But at this point, you know where that staff is now. \u00a0It\u2019s that state school in Pennsylvania that plummeted to the abysmal depths of a 7-win season and took the entire Vanderbilt staff in an attempt to turn it around. \u00a0And for their trouble, right now they\u2019re sitting on what is widely regarded as the #1 recruiting class for the 2015 signing year.<\/p>\n
We can\u2019t have nice things in Vandy athletics. Our hotshot basketball recruiter will get itchy feet after a year. Our talented class with three NBA draft picks will go 1-3 in three NCAA tournament appearances. Our #1-overall pitcher will lose the ability to find the plate in the first round of regionals against Michigan. We\u2019ll have 48 hours to enjoy our first back-to-back bowl game victories, ever<\/em>, before ESPN delivers our coach to State College because he didn\u2019t go to Los Angeles or Austin first. \u00a0And then, when we land one of the most sought-after prospects in college football to replace him, we\u2019ll get slotted 12th in the preseason out of 14 teams. A Kentucky team that we beat three years straight, an Ole Miss squad we beat four years out of six, a Vol squad that has to come to Nashville after losing twice and replacing their entire offensive line – they all have the Vandy game pencilled in as a win.<\/p>\n We get no respect for trying. We get no respect for \u201cdoing things the right way.\u201d We tell ourselves we are to make us feel better, but supposedly Stanford was out there \u201cdoing things the right way\u201d when they got hammered by Cal seven times in eight years, when they were winning one game a year, and do you know when people started giving them credit for it? \u00a0When they went to three straight BCS bowls. \u00a0Pity? \u00a0Sometimes. \u00a0Sympathy? \u00a0Rarely. \u00a0Respect? Never<\/em>.<\/p>\n The fact is, we\u2019re only going to get respect when we start beating people over and over and over and over again<\/em>. \u00a0When it can\u2019t be dismissed as a fluke play or a lucky bounce or a talented player or a coach who caught lightning in a beer bottle. And even then, as long as we have fewer seats in the stadium, fewer fans who only set foot on a college campus for games, less free-floating money wandering into the pockets of players and prospects, we\u2019re not going to be considered a peer with the rest of our conference. \u00a0Because, to be blunt, they are not our peers.<\/p>\n Which begs the question\u2026what are we still doing here?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It shouldn\u2019t bother me this much, and I\u2019m happy for him, but\u2026it kind of sucks. \u00a0Herb Hand, perhaps the most social-media-savvy of all college football assistant coaches, apparently shot an episode of Chopped last summer and it will air in a month or two. \u00a0At the time, he was the offensive line coach of Vandy, … <\/p>\n