Nov. 16, 2006
Commodore Notebook Archive – click here
Growing Pains
I was in Lexington last Saturday and watched the disappointing fourth quarter; chances are you listened up to a point and turned off the radio. You’d heard it before, I’d seen it before, yadda yadda yadda.
Actually, we think we have heard it and seen it all but we really haven’t. There isn’t a link between this team and our team’s of the past – nobody played in 1986 or 1996 that is still playing for us. There’s a new cast on stage. What appears to be the same old thing – because the bottom line result is too familiar – actually isn’t recycled.
We see another season go by without a bowl game and we jump to the easy and for many, obvious, conclusion: Vanderbilt is jinxed on the gridiron; it just ain’t gonna happen here.
Now I could take those three paragraphs, send them to my colleague at Wake Forest this time last year and he would claim that we had just written the Deacons’ pigskin story up to 2005. Today, however, Wake is a cool 9-1 and probably going to win the Atlantic Coast Conference.
The truth is we could take those same three paragraphs and fans from Rutgers would say they applied to them, up to this year. Unbeaten Rutgers, 10-0, is looking at a major New Year’s Day bowl game.
Before I left the old Big Eight Conference in the early 1980’s, Kansas State had what was universally regarded as the worst collegiate football program in the nation. Bill Snyder became its head coach and after a few rough seasons he became a legend. Northwestern was hapless until the Gary Barnett miracle of the mid-1990’s. Sages there said it was the hardest football job in America BEFORE they went to the Rose Bowl and changed perceptions.
I could continue but you get the point.
Everyone inside the Southeastern Conference will tell you that this isn’t your father’s Vanderbilt football program. Everyone. We have some tremendous talent in this program, albeit not quite enough yet to withstand the unending strains of Saturdays in the SEC. But we are getting closer with each passing day. That’s the truth.
You have a right to say that you will believe a winning Commodore football record when you see it. It is a free country. A word of friendly advice heading into our holiday season – don’t bet your ranch that it won’t happen on West End. And I’m here to say it won’t be when hell freezes over; it might be just around the corner.
I know, I know…you’ve heard THAT before, too. So have I. But just like those 2006 Horatio Alger stories of Wake Forest and Rutgers, don’t be too surprised when the sun starts to shine on Dudley Field very soon. We have many reasons to be optimistic and thankful as we head into this holiday season.
I thank you for taking the time to read my rambling thoughts each week and look forward to more visits in the year ahead. And I will try not to gloat and write “I told you so” about Commodore football when we start chalking up victories but I make no promises!