Oct. 29, 2011
It was fitting that during halftime festivities Vanderbilt honored last spring’s baseball team with special College World Series rings.
Heaven knows those Commodores earned them with their SEC co-championship and regional and super regional titles. It may seem to some that Vanderbilt has always been a dominant force on the diamond but those whose memories go back a decade can remember when things weren’t that way.
The more we watch this football team play, the more it reminds us of Tim Corbin’s first team back in 2003. There appears to be a number of parallels.
Corbin came onto the scene following the long tenure of Roy Mewbourne and inherited a bridge hand of aces and spaces. There were stars like Jeremy Sowers, Warner Jones, and Jensen Lewis, steady guys such as catcher Jonathan Douillard and some developing talent along the lines of transfer Ryan Klosterman.
The 2003 team showed fans something that had been missing – a swagger, toughness and a winning mindset. It would record memorable sweeps of Florida and Tennessee, beat mighty LSU two of three and have Worth Scott’s historic two-out homer that earned the Black and Gold a trip to the SEC Tournament for the first time in years. The record was just 27-28 but a fifth grader could see the team was vastly improved.
Let’s look at this football team. James Franklin enters after after Bobby Johnson’s era. Like Corbin, he inherited some excellent talent but perhaps not quite enough for this rough and tumble conference.
There is one thing that is apparent to those watching the Commodore gridders on a regular basis: they play with grit that one wouldn’t suspect coming from the sporting world’s stereotype impression of “Vanderbilt”.
It is true, as every player in the postgame interview room stated, that the only statistic that really matters is the final score. They get it.
But the college football world should also be getting that Vanderbilt is improving each week and it is a vastly better team than it was back on Labor Day. Look at the offensive production, a sore spot in days gone by. With essentially the same cast as a year ago, these `Dores rung up 420 yards total offense on the top 10 Razorbacks.
The Commodores are just plain fun to watch. There is imagination and enthusiasm. They have fun playing. With fourth down and less than one on their own 28, Franklin had enough confidence to give Zac Stacy the pigskin and convert the carry into a first down.
In the second quarter, facing fourth and one on its own 32, the `Dores rolled the dice with Fitz Lassing taking a fake punt 25 yards down the east sideline. The offensive line is playing more crisply, play-makers such as Jordan Rodgers, Stacy and Jordan Matthews among others are emerging.
There’s something else that feels like that ’03 baseball team and that is the intensity of play. It’s full tilt, all-out stuff. There are collisions and the Commodores are the hitters, not the hittee. Like the baseballers, this bunch has little regard for history or the opposing team’s resume.
There are two kinds of teams, those that are getting better and those that are getting worse. Vanderbilt’s Commodores are definitely on the rise.
