Feb. 17, 2012
Quick Slant is an array of brief insights and occasionally opinionated overviews of collegiate athletics in general and the Vanderbilt Commodores in particular.
Most of us use and enjoy the Internet on a daily basis. Without it you would not be reading this column or maybe bought that Valentine’s gift without braving the mall crowd! However, for its many useful purposes the unedited Internet world is still the Wild, Wild West, lacking law, order and often common sense. Last week some of our inboxes were littered with reports that Vanderbilt students were planning to wear a homophobic t-shirt slurring Kentucky at the big basketball game. What began as a trickle led to a stream as chat rooms got all riled up, each new post feeding off the last. Finally at least one local Nashville television station reacted to this rumor, using it as its lead-in to preview the big game. We say rumor as no t-shirt was ever seen by our athletic staff. By the way, even if there had been a grain of truth to this, we have policies of good conduct in place that prohibits articles deemed to be in poor taste.
Unfortunately, the Internet allows the well-intentioned but misinformed user or the conniving shyster to spread false reports since there is no Internet police to weed out fact from fiction. At any given time, one can find a gymnasium full of conspiracy theorists hitchhiking on the Internet highway. All they need is a half-baked allegation and off they march.
The ESPN GameDay experience was fun and memorable. Their crew is gifted, their resources plentiful and their reach is powerful. One troubling observation they made is that they see student support at the basketball events somewhat soft from campus to campus. We had a super enthusiastic student contingent complete with clever signage on hand two hours before the 9:00 a.m. show began but we needed to fill in the edges of the student section with members of the public. That is typical according to the ESPN crew.
Speaking of ESPN GameDay, how many major private universities have had the distinction of hosting both the network’s football and basketball extravaganzas? We think the answer is one – Vanderbilt.
Like the swallows returning to Capistrano, whenever there is a construction project on campus in which a tall structure is involved, we get messages from loyal Commodores demanding the “UT Flag” get taken down from high above the site. We love the passion but must remind you that these are not “UT Flags” but rather state mandated flags that happen to be orange. We can all imagine how orange came to be the color, but the point is they are not the handiwork of a Tennessee sports fan. The construction companies usually realize the awkwardness; the one flying in front of McGugin Center has a Vanderbilt flag just beneath it.