Metro Pulse/Cover/UT Sports Issue

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Field Generals
In a year of great QBs, the Vols should come out on top

Walking?
UT's most notorious physical-education class is not just a stroll in the park

Try 5,000 Pizzas
Win or lose, the Neyland crowd has to eat and drink

Football Season, Dammit!

The Real Rules of the Game
What do those funny little men in stripes mean by those funny little gestures?

Confessions of a Vanderbilt fan

by Bill Carey

I know what you think. You think that those of us who went to the private, snooty college in Nashville are all so busy ironing our monogrammed sweaters, playing cricket, asking daddy for a loan, and polishing our resumes that we don't even notice when fall gets here. You think that it doesn't matter to us whether we actually win or lose, which would be a good thing, because we do more of the former than of the latter. You think Vanderbilt fans and alumni just don't care about wins and losses.

What the hell would you know?

Yes, I'm a Vanderbilt fan. Every time I say that in Knoxville, I hesitate at the end of the sentence, half expecting everyone else in the room to give me an sympathetic look and come back with "Hi, Vanderbilt fan," as if I'm at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I've been a Vanderbilt fan ever since that day in late August of 1983, when I was a freshman at that school and the Commodores were coming off a bowl season with a home game against Maryland. I remember that day well; it was hot as Hades and the game took forever because it was televised. I wore shorts and a T-shirt and just about every other male student wore a coat and tie.

If memory serves, Vanderbilt led throughout the game against Maryland. Then, in the fourth quarter, a quarterback named Boomer Esiason led the Terrapins to a 21-14 victory.

Boomer went on to have a successful pro career and has long since retired to be a sportscaster. I've aged more than I care to ponder. And Vanderbilt has gone through an entire generation of young people, six head football coaches, and 19 consecutive losing seasons. That's right, 19 consecutive losing seasons. The day I stepped foot in Dudley Field in my shorts and T-shirt was the beginning of one of the most hapless streaks in college sports history. Most of the people now playing football for Vanderbilt weren't born yet when Vanderbilt went 8-3 back in 1982. And I have suffered.

A lot of the suffering has come at the hands of the University of Tennessee, and I just wanted you all to know that. I was there my sophomore year, when Tennessee beat us 29-13 and my senior year when UT won 35-20. I wasn't at the game in Knoxville in the fall of 1987, when Vanderbilt took a 28-3 lead in the second quarter against Tennessee. I was playing pool with my father-in-law; I specifically remember telling him that I thought Vandy would hang on to win as long as they didn't do something stupid like fumble the opening kickoff in the second half. (Vanderbilt then fumbled the opening kickoff in the second half, and Tennessee came back to win 38-36.)

I have other memories that are all bitter in their own ways. There was 1991, when Vandy entered the UT game with a four-game winning streak and a 5-5 record, only to get drubbed 45-0. There were close calls in 1992 (29-25); 1995 (12-7); and 1996 (14-7). In fact, many Vanderbilt fans believe to this day that the only reason Peyton didn't get the Heisman was his inability to score on the Vanderbilt defense.

The worst UT-Vanderbilt experience that I've ever had, however, wasn't a close call. In November 1994, Vanderbilt entered its game against UT with a 5-5 record, having beaten Kentucky and Georgia that year. The game was in Nashville, and it was expected to be close. But UT scored on its first series, then its second, then its third. It was awful; it was as if the Vanderbilt players just didn't care. In the second quarter, with the score 37-0, my friend and I decided we had seen enough. We tried to hustle down the stairs and make it out of the stadium as fast as we could, but we stopped for a second to see the field from up close before walking on into the parking lot; we saw the Volunteers score again, making it 44-0. I remember that last score well, because I was standing next to a bearded and drunk UT fan who grabbed me by the arm and pointed at the scoreboard, jumping up and down as if he were a prospector who had just discovered gold. I almost decked the guy. (As it turns out, I wasn't the only Vandy fan who had that urge that day. A female secretary for the Vanderbilt Athletic Department physically attacked a UT fan that day, thus becoming the only human being wearing black at Dudley Field to commit violence against someone wearing orange on that occasion, and that includes the football team.)

All this is a long way of pointing out that football season means different things to different people. To most of the people in Knoxville, it would appear as if the season brings glorious and victorious experience, a chance to compete for the national championship and crush most of the opponents in a sea of superior athletes and Big Orange spirit. But for the last two decades of my life, there have been two kinds of seasons: the ones when I can look at the schedule and dare to dream about the possibility that we could somehow sneak up on enough people to win six or even seven games, and the Septembers when there's just no way it could ever happen. And for some reason, I just can't laugh about it.

Having said all this, I don't think Vanderbilt has anything to be ashamed of.

Sewanee stopped trying to play football against big public schools on the eve of World War II, back when the phrase "student athlete" actually meant a regular, academically qualified student who practiced for a sport about an hour a day for three months out of the year and then played for about three hours one day a week. Vanderbilt should have followed suit, and nearly did so in the early 1950s. But its chancellor was thwarted in his effort to "de-emphasize" football by the board of trustees and by alumni, who still remembered the school's glory years as a football powerhouse in the 1920s. The school has flirted with leaving the conference several times since, most recently about 10 years ago (when Chancellor Joe Wyatt's secret plan to help form a league of private colleges was thwarted because of geographic concerns.) With the school's dual habit of losing on the field and graduating virtually all of its athletes off the field, Wyatt probably had a point. So, like the computer in the 1982 movie War Games, it may very well be that for Vanderbilt in football, the winning move may be not to play anymore.

However, Vanderbilt hasn't made this call yet, and for the time being, new Chancellor Gordon Gee doesn't look like he has any intention of doing so. So it's my patriotic duty to root for the team; to look at the upcoming schedule, scratch my head, and figure out a way, in my own mind at least, that the Commodores can win seven games out of their newly expanded 12-game schedule. "Let's see: Connecticut and Furman are looking pretty good. MTSU and Kentucky are definite maybes. Now we can scratch Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, and Georgia off the list completely. That means we have to win three of the remaining four games against Georgia Tech, Auburn, Ole Miss, South Carolina. Oh, God..."