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Unfortunately for all of us, Vandy alumn Al Gore wants you to be super duper serial about the following post.
In a little over three weeks the Cincinnati Bearcats will face the Vanderbilt Commodores on the gridiron in the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, Tennessee. Between now and then, you’ll be saturated with more information than you can handle about Vandy’s football team. But it’s appropriate to begin with an overview of the University itself and a quick trip over to the school’s Wikipedia page should provide all the info we need. Online colleges will have more information if you need it.Whether you like it or not, here we go…
The University of Vanderbilt was founded by that guy, Cornelius Vanderbilt, in 1873 when he gave a whopping $1 million endowment (in 1800’s terms) to what was then “Central University” in Nashville. Rightfully so, the university honored him by changing the school’s name to “Vanderbilt”. On another note, the guy looks like an 1800’s version of current West Virginia Head Coach Dana Holgorsen. Basically what Holgorsen would look like with mutton chops. Must be the hair. But that’s neither here nor there, so let’s move on.
The university itself boasts some of the best academics in the United States. They have extremely selective admission standards with incoming freshman basically getting perfect SAT and ACT scores to get in. That’s awesome from an academic standpoint but really sucks when the schools Vanderbilt regularly plays in the SEC could give two shits about “studying” or “tests” or “words”. The biggest hindrance to Commodore football over the years is that they’ve had trouble recruiting against other SEC schools because of their high standards. Of course, Jay Cutler went there and he’s dumb as rocks so I guess there’s a few that slip through the cracks.
As you may have gathered, the Vanderbilt teams are appropriately named the “Commodores”. What you may not know is that they are called that because it is the nickname of their founder Cornelius. Kind of a cool historical fun-fact but does little to get me frightened about getting man handled by some old, wrinkly dude in a funny hat. I’m not saying the Bearcat is much better but at least he has red eyes. Just sayin’.
If there’s one thing the Commodores have been consistently good at year-in and year-out it’s basketball. Vanderbilt is a regular contender for the SEC title and a perennial NCAA Tournament team. Probably the coolest part about their basketball program is their arena:
It is, I believe, the only court where each of the team benches are behind the baskets as opposed to along the sidelines, where they are traditionally located. As you can see, the arena is extremely tall as fans are actually packed into a third deck, like at a football stadium. It’s definitely one of the most unique venues in college sports and on my bucket list.
Closing this out, I can’t speak about Vanderbilt without mentioning how they completely cannibalized their athletic department in 2003. Vandy’s athletic director at the time pretty much downsized varsity sports and treated them as “hobbies” rolled up under the Office of Student Life. But getting shot in the heart by their own athletic department hasn’t stopped the Commodores basketball or baseball programs, who continue to the be the best in the SEC and the country.
Now that that’s out of the way, I can finally dissect anything and everything related to Vandy football. So look out for that in the coming weeks.