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Commodore Notebook 9/26 9/26/2005 Notes and Commentary When Bad News Strikes Most football fans went to bed Saturday night feeling that warm glow of victory. A few of us were awakened just a few hours later to news of a shooting incident in one of our residence halls that involved three of our football players. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt but the fallout from such a bizarre event will be felt for some time. This University has always been a safe place and the administration is taking aggressive steps to make it even safer. From the sports side, this news creates a myriad communications that quickly mix rumor with fact. The first assumption some have when they hear an athlete was shot at 1:30 in the morning is that the player must be guilty of something. In fact, the evidence documents that our players did nothing wrong. Baby Boomers are doing well if they are awake for Letterman’s monologue. That is not the case with college students, many of whom start to plan their after-dark activities then. In other words, for there to be a gathering in a dorm room at 1:30 Sunday morning is the rule, not the exception, on any campus in America. Our Richmond game ended at about 9:20 and by the time most players cleared the locker room it was 10:30. For some of them to be up and around in the dorm a couple hours after the game is also not unusual and it was where they were supposed to be. Another stereotype goes that when a coach says he can’t comment because of an investigation he is providing cover for guilty team members. In this case, Coach Johnson was told that public comments could damage the investigation being conducted by Metro police. The player eye-witnesses are absolutely off-limits for the same reason. University security and administration also investigated. None of the actual investigating was done by athletics personnel because it is regarded as a University incident, not an athletics matter. The football players were by-standers, unfortunately in harm’s way at exactly the wrong time. The incident certainly had an unsettling affect on our campus; young people are here to learn and accomplish. This was one of life’s more difficult lessons; one we pray will never be repeated. Lessons of September Our fast football start has made Commodore football a hot commodity, which impacts everyone involved directly or even indirectly with the program. Anyone purchasing a ticket recently has observed our hard-working ticket office staff virtually swamped with lines of buyers and callers. The Richmond game crowd, which many thought just a month ago would be modest, came within an eye-lash of selling out, attracting 38,446 gold-clad fans. The Spiders brought about 400 fans so this was a night when Vanderbilt partisans dominated Dudley Field. It was also an exciting week in the media relations office! Most of you probably saw or heard at least one major national news organization talking or writing about the red-hot Commodores. You will be seeing more in the days ahead. The September 19 issue of the New York Times fired one of the first major shots, running a lengthy feature and action photo of Jay Cutler as the lead story in its college football section. That same morning, we exchanged phone calls and e-mails with ESPN’s Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit — an unmistakable sign that your program has reached the national radar. Later that same day we had a lengthy discussion with the administrative head of ESPN’s college football coverage; a few hours afterward we heard talk radio personalities speculating if ESPN had interest in Vanderbilt. Absolutely. Tom Weir, a sportswriter for USA Today who happens to reside in Nashville, attended Bobby Johnson’s weekly Monday press conference and would weave some of those remarks into a big article that came out Tuesday. The Associated Press also carried a feature on our turn-around on its national wire, a story that would be printed in newspapers throughout the nation including the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune to name a few. A story on National Public Radio is likely to emerge early this week and so it goes. As this column goes on-line we have just learned the LSU game will be nationally telecast by ESPN2. A month ago we could have shouted from the highest mountain top and wouldn’t have gotten anyone’s attention. Make some plays and win some games and suddenly we are caught in the media food chain. Suddenly everyone wants to know the nuances of our story. Has the reorganization worked? How will your winning ways impact the rest of the college football world? The sports world is pretty fickle. Our Commodores are a terrific story and deserving of the credit passed their direction. These guys were pumping iron, running sprints on sweltering summer afternoons and watching film while most of the sports world was snickering at their chances to win even a couple of games. The coaches were successfully attracting better student-athletes while recruiting gurus were parroting each other’s doom and gloom rankings. Fans have come back to enjoy the fun of football Saturdays. These anecdotes are among the lessons of September that should be remembered by all of us. Vandyville is Well Populated The Richmond game didn’t kickoff till 6 p.m. and the Vandyville tailgate area officially opens three hours prior to kickoff but there were Commodore fans on hand before noon and by mid-afternoon things were bustling. For those of you who have walked through or stopped by, yes — there have already been discussions of how Vandyville can be enlarged next year. At the moment, putting up additional tents would make it virtually impossible for the heavy foot traffic to get from one end to the other. It is what former Athletic Director Roy Kramer used to describe as a “Class A problem” to contemplate. Travel Light! Here’s a sure-fire tip to save some time at the entry gates of Vanderbilt Stadium: if at all possible, don’t carry any bags or items that would require searching into the stadium. That way you avoid a few minutes at the search table and we can speed up our lines in the process. Mario’s Rap Most fans were unable to hear the halftime performance by basketball’s Mario Moore. Because it was a part of the marching band’s performance, Mario’s microphone was not run through the stadium public address but rather the band’s own, smaller sound system. This is the band’s normal procedure; had everyone understood in advance that only a portion of the stadium was going to hear Mario, we would have either made adjustments to bolster the sound or not billed the event to the public as we did. |
