July 18, 2008
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Two Vanderbilt co-captains and longtime starters, safety Reshard Langford and receiver George Smith, will represent the Commodores at the highly anticipated Southeastern Conference Media Days next week in Birmingham, Ala.
Langford, a senior from Tanner, Ala., and Smith, a resident of Pembroke Pines, Fla., will join Head Coach Bobby Johnson to discuss the upcoming Commodore season before hundreds of media representatives from across the nation. SEC Media Days is expected to attract more than 700 writers, easily the highest attendance of any conference preseason media activity.
Johnson thinks Langford and Smith are ideal candidates to discuss the Commodore season when they appear next Wednesday afternoon at the Wynfrey Hotel just south of Birmingham.
“Along with other third co-captain Bradley Vierling, Reshard and George are just great leaders for our team. They represent the best of Vanderbilt football – great players on the field, tremendous guys in the locker room and outstanding representatives of our university,” Johnson said. “Both of these guys believe in our program and what we’re working to accomplish here. And they both also have a tremendous personal story to tell.”
Langford has started every game in his Commodore career, preparing for his final season with a consecutive start streak extending to 35 games. He also has been tremendously productive, entering 2008 as the team’s active career leader with 171 total tackles and eight interceptions.
Smith has endured a remarkable journey at Vanderbilt. One of a handful of sixth-year players in the SEC, Smith overcame a serious illness during his freshman year that included weeks of intensive care and temporary paralysis and the loss of more than 30 pounds. He has returned to blossom on the field, entering the season with 76 career receptions, 997 receiving yards and eight touchdown catches.
Both student-athletes are grateful for the opportunity of representing their teammates at Media Days.
“I’m tremendously honored to have been selected to represent my teammates at this event. I’m very excited and very thankful for the opportunity of talking about our team. I’ll do my best,” Smith said.
“It’s big, it’s just real big to me,” Langford said. “For my coaches and my teammates to have faith that I’ll do a great job representing them at Media Days is very important to me. I also take a great deal of personal pride being from Alabama, and going back there for this event.”
Smith, who has 24 career starts, set single-season highs with 32 catches and 397 yards last year. He had at least one catch in all 12 games for the Commodores.
Off the field, Smith is expected to graduate in December with a degree from the College of Arts and Science. He has talked openly about his near-fatal neurological ailment, transverse myelitis, which struck him just before Spring Break 2004. The Vanderbilt representative on the 2007 SEC Community Service Team, Smith frequently talks with elementary school students and patients at Vanderbilt Medical Center and Children’s Hospital about overcoming the illness.
Salutatorian of his senior class at Tanner (Ala.) High School, Langford is regarded as one of the SEC’s most physical players, and anchors one of the strongest Commodore defensive secondaries in several years. A 2005 Freshman All-American, Langford has gained All-SEC consideration in several preseason magazines this season.
Langford also is expected to graduate in December from the College of Arts and Science.
Both student-athletes work closely with young kids. For the past three years, Smith and Langford have worked summers mentoring young children at the Martha O’Bryan Center in east Nashville.