Aug. 10, 2012
Quick Slant is an array of brief insights and occasionally opinionated overviews of collegiate athletics in general and the Vanderbilt Commodores in particular.
This is what momentum feels like as our football season ticket total climbs every day.
Several of our fall sports teams have already reported for preseason practice and have been effectively using McGugin Center’s new meeting and in some cases, new locker rooms. Particularly helped is football, which now has a beautiful, high-tech auditorium in which learning can better take place. Soccer is already in new locker facilities and also using new meeting space while cross country reports early next week.
Since you must be online to read this, you might appreciate these two recent social media notes of significance. That football team/coaches’ spontaneous dance video posted earlier this week went viral as they say and got national attention, catching the eye of ESPN in less than 90 minutes. Crazy how that can happen. And a new Facebook promotion gained as many new fans to Vanderbilt Athletics in just one week as the previous 13 weeks combined.
Speaking of increases, pretty nice Dore Jam turnout last weekend considering iffy weather conditions forced a late change in location. Some estimates of attendance were roughly double what we’ve seen in the past. We loved the black and gold attire we saw worn. Anchor Down!
Our football Commodore Call-in show starts August 23 in the 7:00 – 8:00 p.m. (Central) time slot. Broadcasts are live from the Commodore Grille at the Holiday Inn-Vanderbilt and aired on the powerful clear channel WLAC 1510 AM and streamed over vucommodores.com.
We’re looking forward to cross country, yes we are. Last year our women’s team easily won the Southeastern Conference title and it expects to be very strong once again. Coach Steven Keith, a Vanderbilt grad himself, and assistant Rhonda Riley have done a remarkable building job over the last few years and with that new multipurpose building on the horizon and Keith also coaching our women’s track and field team, now is the time to buy stock in that program as it will benefit greatly from the outstanding indoor track that will be included. By the way, we are hosting the SEC Championship October 26 and will run over newly constructed bridges that greatly enhance the Warner Park Course, thanks to the generosity of many.