Monday, November 24, 2008
Hannan / Sports Vanderbilt-Tennessee Game Predictably Bad, Also Just Plain Predictable
Posted by Caleb Hannan on Mon, Nov 24, 2008 at 12:39 PM
Let's say you didn't spend your Saturday afternoon watching Tennessee play Vanderbilt. Let's say instead you did something silly, like raked leaves. Or volunteered at a soup kitchen.
Whatever. Point is, after you came inside and removed your coat and switched on the TV you saw a stat flash along that little ticker at the bottom of the screen: Tennessee had 21 passing yards. Total. For the game. OK quick, what's your first thought?
Gotta be something like "Gee, how badly did the Commodores beat them," right? After all, the only Division I teams that win with anemic passing lines like that are Power-I disciple academies like Navy and Air Force. Ahhhhh, but not this year!
Not with Vandy ranked 118th and Tennessee ranked 117th (bragging rights!) in total offense. Not with the execrable Jonathan Crompton behind center. And don't just take my word for it. Observe the following online convo between Every Day Should Be Saturday's Orson Swindle and some prescient Tennessee fan named Holly:
12:13:47 PM Holly: Oh, Jesus, they put Crompton back in
12:13:51 PM Holly: timestamp this
12:13:59 PM Holly: let's see how long before something horrible happens
12:14:00 PM Swindle: You can't be nervous
12:14:03 PM Holly: No.
12:14:07 PM Swindle: (3:14)
12:14:09 PM Holly: Well, we're up by 10
12:14:11 PM Holly: so I can
12:14:13 PM Holly: but I'm not.
12:14:35 PM Swindle: You have powers
12:14:37 PM Holly: Fumble!
12:14:39 PM Holly: I AM NOT KIDDING
12:14:44 PM Swindle: That was under a minute
12:14:47 PM Holly: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
12:14:53 PM Holly: this is science at this point, right?
12:15:10 PM Swindle: Yes. I am comfortable saying this is correlation.
Tennessee QB-ineptitude is now about as watch-settingly accurate as the sun dial. That couldn't bode well for the future.
Comments (5)
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Hannan: If you were told sometime in the past that your were a competent sports writer, as Warner Wolfe would say, "THEY LIED!"
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Yes, Crompton was terrible, in what little we saw of him. (He didn't run enough plays to give us a valid sample.) Yes, the rest of UT's QB play was inconsistent at best. And, yes, though Mr. Hannan didn't mention him, Vandy's Chris Nickson played worse than any of UT's quarterbacks.
But to say that this game was "predictably bad" reveals a certain ignorance of this series (or perhaps an outsider's disinterest in the local fare?). This year's vintage won't go down as a classic. But in most of the past 25 seasons the UT-Vandy game has been close and exciting. I can recall less than a handful during that time in which Vandy was out of the game before the 4th quarter began, and many came down to the final few minutes (or less).
By the way, both defenses in this year's game were (predictably) pretty good.
Boyd --
The "predictably bad" quip didn't refer to the series as a whole. It was meant to suggest that, going into the game, fans of both sides knew they were dealing with two teams that offset a solid defense with an anemic offense. That's usually a recipe for the kind of low-scoring, sloppy play we saw on Saturday.
I would only reply that, for fans of the two teams, "predictably bad" is a mostly inoperative phrase when the Vols and Vanderbilt get together. Bragging points in this game are far more important than style points. Each side would rather win ugly than lose purty.
