The Vanderbilt Vendidad

This is my eighth column as Vanderbilt sports columnist for the Nashville Newzine

Rebuilding Year!

by Robert Funke

For those of you who didn’t tune in (or follow my admittedly excessive real-time game-tweeting at twitter.com/vandyvendidad), Vanderbilt lost again, but in especially heartbreaking fashion. It was a “moral victory,” which is defined in Commodore fan terms as, “covering the spread without winning.” But this weekend served as a reminder of why I give the ‘Dores my heart to break.

Vanderbilt used to be a team of pathetic losses and moral defeats. The Vanderbilt football team of the Woody Widenhofer era was an especially morally-defeated team. I remember being a young fan watching my favorite team on television, only to see my father (former Vanderbilt basketball player Bad Bob Funke from Pee Wee Valley, Kentucky), shouting curses at referees and coaches and Fulmers and such, while my mother, who is less football-literate, but wise in the forms of human expression, would look at Widenhofer’s vacant gaze from the sidelines and say, “He looks like he doesn’t even care! They’re falling apart, and he doesn’t even care!” The Widenhofer era was a dark time for the Funke family.

Then came Bobby Johnson, and so began a new age of moral victories. Before Bobby, we were a bad team that never won. Gradually, we became an average team that never won. Then, we were a dangerous team that never won. Then, in 2005, we gave “winning” a try, and have since stayed competitive, showing arguable improvement annually.

This year, we haven’t scared any of our SEC brethren.  While I would argue that the biggest change between 2007’s team and the 2008 Music City Bowl Champion team involved some mix of luck, sorcery, and attitude, the 2009 Commodores are undeniably thinner, weaker, more frail and less skilled than last year’s squad.

But after this weekend, I’m okay with that.

My biggest fear was that the Vanderbilt Commodore football program had completely collapsed, whooped back into the Stone Age (or at least the late 90’s). I feared that Bobby Johnson had finally surrendered to the evil spirits that have defeated so many coaches past, but no!

It’s just a rebuilding year, folks. Take heart. I think we’ll pick up one more win this year—if only on the back of mutant punter Brett Upson—and come back strong next year, Evidence comes from this weekend’s loss heartbreaking loss to South Carolina:

• Larry Smith is not very good. But after this weekend, he showed that he can be, and pitting him against Charlie Goro next year will make a lot more sense than pitting him against Mackinzie Adams now. Whether Adams should have seen more snaps earlier this year is up for debate, but whether he should be a starter moving forward is a no-brainer: stick with The Future for now, let Goro push him next year.
• Our offense was able to keep the defense off the field (or at least only on the field for half of the game) for the first three quarters. Even though they scored zero (0) touchdowns again, we were able to compete in time of possession, a statistical category in which we’ve been pathetic this year.
• Warren Norman is excellent, and will continue to improve. Our running back situation could be very good.
• Our offensive line has injured itself from “veteran” to “young,” which is bad for us now, but theoretically good for us in the future.
• With another offensively pathetic showing, our offense is now so bad that I see a game in which the offensive unit scored zero (again, 0) points as our most impressive SEC showing thus far. This bodes well for a restructuring of our offensive coaching staff, which will be absolutely necessary for us to be competitive in the future.
• Defense: still stout, and improving against the run.

Vanderbilt may never be an SEC superpower, and Vanderbilt may be in the SEC basement at the moment, but there’s nothing like a moral victory to rekindle hope in that silly bunch of brutes.

That said, the Georgia Tech game will almost certainly be this year’s rock-bottom. We match up horribly against the Yellow Jackets. Brace yourselves.

Oh, and one more thing: if the ‘Dores can hold Montario Hardesty to under 80 yards, the Vols are going down. Suck on that, Talkin’ Vol.