Are my eyes really blue?

So I see the usual suspects down South are up in arms again about how Vandy should be playing Middle Tennessee. This is hogwash, and rather worse than hogwash, for reasons I will now enumerate.

Let's start with the obvious one: whenever your opponent is giving you advice, it would generally be a very stupid thing to take it. That is a fact of life and it's one too many people (especially media types) don't pay enough attention to. The fact that the Blue Raiders think a game with Vandy would be a good thing for the Dores DOES NOT MEAN that it would be a good thing for the Dores.

Second fact: Vanderbilt is in the SEC East, which might be the hardest division in sports right now. Let's do the rundown, courtesy of the AP:

Kentucky (8)
Florida (9)
South Carolina (11)
Georgia (12)
Tennessee (NR)

Go back and look at that again. Four of Vandy's five divisional rivals are RANKED IN THE TOP 12. Add in Auburn, Alabama, and Tennessee, and seven of Vandy's eight conference games are against teams that are either in the top 25 or have been there at least once this year. At this point, we could schedule the Poor Claire Sisters and the Veterans of Foreign Wars and nobody could say a damn word about it.

(As an aside, it's a show that the AP has Steve Superior's Gamecocks at 11 and the coaches' poll has them at 18. Proof, if any were needed, that the coaches' poll isn't worth the paper I used to wipe over it. But I digress.)

Anyway: we're NOT a top 25 team. We may never be a top 25 team in my lifetime. We don't even have the luxury of the pity vote that Spurrier throws Duke every season. We are going to struggle like hell just to clear .500 every single season. We're not competing for a conference title, we're not contending for a BCS berth, we're not going for a national championship. We're just trying to break the cycle.

So when we have those four non-con berths to fill every year, there is only one criterion: WILL THIS GAME CONTRIBUTE TO RAISING THE PROFILE OF THE FOOTBALL PROGRAM?

In the case of a Michigan, sure. Absolutely. Play Michigan in Ann Arbor on ESPN, and you get the opportunity to be seen nationwide, to hang tough the whole way, to make people give you a second look. You don't think Vandy could pull the same thing that some I-AA school seems to do annually now? I guarantee you we'd beat Stanford if we played them tomorrow. In Palo Alto. You play games like that, you stand a chance of a good loss, one that makes you look better for having made the effort and gives you something you can take away.

So if it won't be a good loss, it had better be a sure win, because if you want a bowl game, you need six of them. Six wins to play in December, take a trip, be the only game on TV while kids throw the snow around (or the leaves and mud, whatever). You can probably get one win every year in conference - beat Ole Miss, or Kentucky, or maybe get an upset off Georgia or Tennessee. If you're really lucky, you can string two of them together. But go back and look at that list of teams again. Tennessee tends to be ranked. And if Alabama and Auburn aren't there, those seats go to Mississippi State (ask Auburn or Bama what pushovers Croom's boys are). Or Arkansas. Or LSU. It would take a miracle to piece together three conference wins out of eight. Which means that out of those four non-conference games, you basically need to win exactly four. Every profile-elevating loss you risk means that you're probably putting your six-win bowl season in a blender and pressing PUREE.

What, then, does Vandy have to gain by playing MTSU? Nothing. "Oh, it's a natural rivalry!" So why aren't they playing Memphis or UT every year? Proximity isn't rivalry, or why doesn't UAB play Samford every year? Hell, why doesn't UAB play Auburn again? "It'll build interest!" No it won't. MTSU might someday be the 3rd most prominent college program in Tennessee, but probably not, and once you get more than 30 miles outside Nashville, nobody else gives a damn. "Vandy's scared to play us!" I wouldn't say scared, but it hasn't gone well lately - but here's the point: if there is an outside shot of a bowl, of a non-losing season, of breaking the biggest streak of futility in major college football - is it worth taking a chance on throwing that away for the sake of playing a non-BCS team from nearby just so they can say they played against an SEC team?

HELL no. If you said yes, take a cinder block and drop it on your head. Vandy gains NOTHING by playing MTSU except a handful of gate receipts and the opportunity to piss away a shot at something approximating success.

Maybe someday when the Commodores have been to more than one bowl game in a generation - hell, maybe when we can go less than a decade between winning seasons - when one loss isn't enough to completely derail the program for the year, we can consider changing our scheduling for the sake of 30 extra seconds on the Channel 4 highlights and another 5000 single-game tickets. But the program keeps hovering right there at 5 wins, with something always bouncing just the wrong way to prevent 6. Until we break through on a semi-permanent basis, it's not worth risking a single shot at Big Six on Little Middle.

...when they shrinkwrap your car on your last day.

Yep - that really was Vanderbilt going down to Auburn to shat the bed. Effectively a five-touchdown loss (a garbage-time drive for a TD against Auburn's fourth-string D hardly counts), it's becoming painfully obvious that this isn't going to be the year. Kentucky's a fraud as a top-10 team, but they're still better than us, and Georgia won't be caught sleeping again. There are a lot of games left to play, and 3 wins in the next 7 could get it done, but there aren't 3 wins out there to pick up.

Meanwhile, the SEC...Arkansas lost to Alabama lost to Georgia lost to UT (BADLY) who lost to Florida lost to Auburn lost to MISSISSIPPI STATE. Auburn whales on Vanderbilt and Florida but spits the bit to MSU and South Florida? (Don't come talking up South Florida. Nobody ranked 6th in the country should be tied 7-7 at the half with Florida Atlantic. Another fraud team.) I don't know if the whole SEC is really that good or if everyone's that inconsistent, but right now, if Florida goes down bad tonight, I think you have to consider the possibility that the SEC this year consists of LSU and a bunch of spastics.

Speaking of fraud, Wisconsin at #5 loses on the road? Badly? Add the Kentucky loss, the substandard South Florida performance*, all the top-10 losses last week, and you have to start considering the very real possibility that nobody knows anything, and that the foreordained LSU-Pac 10 matchup is really going to happen. (Consider, too, that the #3 team in the Pac-10 could conceivably go 11-1 and wind up in the Sun Bowl, and you will have proof once and for all that the Pac-10 doesn't take care of its teams.)

I wish I had an answer for Vanderbilt, but short of a trade to the ACC, I don't.

* South Florida is this year's Rutgers: feel-good team out of a mediocre conference, with one or two good wins and an utterly diabetic schedule otherwise. They were sweating the fourth quarter against Florida Atlantic, and if you have to hang on by your nails against a Sun Belt team, you're not a top 10 program. Anybody who votes the Bulls up this week deserves to lose their ballot.

I had a bloody excellent 4-day weekend after leaving OldNewJob (or is that NewOldJob?) and as I type this am getting ready to go in to work at NewNewJob for Day 3. Unfortunately, things being how they are, I'm afraid that I may not have work email for two weeks and may not have a badge until after the first of the new year, which is kind of a show but can't be helped.

The scary thing is that I have had more than one flash of "maybe I could do this for another 10 years." I don't know if it's just Phase 1 or what, but it's strange sensation that I think you humans call "optimism." =)

...but you can't quibble with our alums.

Muhammed Yunus 2006
Al Gore 2007
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
BACK-TO-BACK NOBEL PRIZE WINNER
PWN3D!!!!!!

(yeah, your boy is NEVER claiming his undergrad school again. How glad am I that I didn't get the tattoo?)

Well, there's Vandy down the tank. Needed that one. And I seriously doubt that Kentucky will roll over for us. No undefeated teams left in the SEC. Stand by for some sclub school like South Florida or Hawaii getting a berth in the title game. Actually, don't. The undeserving teams always get paired with the ones they're most likely to beat, so they can eke out a win and them complain that they deserve a piece of the title. How about this: play more than one ranked team and then talk to me. Better yet, play the #1 team on a neutral site. Be sure to write out your farewells to loved ones first. If South Florida had to go into Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, you could bury the whole team in one casket. Preferably closed.

Meanwhile, Cal...memo to Kevin Riley: there will be better days coming. Freshmen were put on this earth to do stupid things, and if that stunt you pulled in the last 14 seconds is the dumbest thing you do on or off the field this year, you got off light. Believe me when I say that. You did a lot of good things under trying circumstances, and will get better with every opportunity. However, deciding to leg it with a linebacker between you and the endzone - with a 29-yard tying field goal still possible if you threw the ball away - was hands down the stupidest !!!!-ing thing anyone has done all year in college football. I know Tedford was defending you up and down in public, which is good, but somebody needs to tie a cinderblock to your ankles in practice this week. THROW - IT - AWAY.

Your new Top 3: Ohio State, Boston College, South Florida. Everything that has happened in college football for the last 10 years has made it a worse game, and I'm running out of patience. Most of all, I'm getting sick of one 5-win season after another in Nashville. Even an Alabama team crippled by probation with an amiable dunce at the controls managed 10 wins and a New Years' Day bowl. Either suck less or cancel football.

* Vandy has two quarterbacks. Which means they have no quarterback. I think that's in the commandments somewhere after "thou shalt not kill" and coveting they neighbor's ass but before don't put metal in the microwave and don't serve red wine with fish.

* I'm sort of torn...the iPhone isn't a complete laptop replacement, but it almost seems like I should have gone with a MacBook Pro. The step up to the MacBook isn't quite enough, but it's still the blogger's delight as far as battery life and wi-fi performance. And yet I still need to have a pen and a pad for some reason.

* I have struggled through a couple of different 0.38mm gel pens recently (0.38? Really? We need to get down to HUNDREDTHS OF A MILLIMETER? We can get down to hundredths of a millimeter?) but am not really satisfied. For some reason, gel ink has never worked as well for me as the plain old roller ball ink from the classic Pilot VBall in Extra Fine 0.5mm, which carried me through most if not all of my college education and several years after. The problem with me and retractable gel pens is obscure and weird, but there it is: ever since seventh grade, I carry my pen in my right hip pocket next to my wallet. Have done so for well over twenty years now and no plans to change. However, a retractable just doesn't fly there, because if you push the button at the wrong time, boom, leaky pen point in your hip and a big black smudge in your 501s.

The practical upshot of this is that I have long coveted the telescoping Fisher Space Pen. I have bought three. I have lost all three. This is what is known as "bad arithmetic." Until I can be assured of not losing it, I am reluctant to splash out money that would buy me two whole boxes of extra-fine Pilot G2s, which most people seem to think is the god of pens. For the first time, it occurs to me that the caliber of paper on which I am writing could be making an impact. Something to think about. Damn, I wish I could find that third retractable space pen. (The reason it works is because to extend the pen point you have to pull out on the end rather than pushing a button, making it basically impossible to open accidentally while preserving the efficacy of one-handed operation.)

* The new job has cut into my blogging time. Not because I was blogging at work at the old place, but because, oddly enough, I had a little more clarity of mind after work when I was there. Three months ago, I would leave the office and come home, and before I could even get on the freeway, I had shut off the work portion of my brain and was dedicated to something else. Now, with a new job and having not yet proven myself (and still trying to get my feet under me two weeks in, thanks to the paperwork and byzantine complexities of this particular contract), I find that even though I'm not thinking about work after hours, there is a low-grade fug that's probably a by-product of the anxieties that go along with being back in ramp-up mode. It's comforting to see that I was writing the same things three years ago, though - and as it stands at the moment, I have one built-in upcoming disaster to help weather and then a built-in two-week break from same, which means I have an excellent opportunity to prove my chops without getting burnt out early in the process. Always good to hope.

* It's finally autumnal and crispy at night, and the days have been heavy and leaden and overcast and not warm at all. PERFECT. I could take 360 days a year like this. Maybe I really should consider a transfer to Scotland...

Tennessee 17
Alabama 41

Vanderbilt 17
South Carolina 6

I should be running drunk through street smoking three cigars at once, but I'm not even cised. I think it may be time to consider that something is wrong with me beyond just the sudden onset of senile sanity...

...at the new job. Big task today involves figuring out backup server software and getting a program in place to make sure everything gets backed up routinely. A good idea, and actually a core criterion of whether I'm doing my job. Me, I'm counting on Leopard to take care of all my personal backups going forward. I just have to sort out the dog's breakfast of hard disks and server systems at home (and my server systems, I mean the one iMac that everything's plugged into).

Anyway...

I stumbled across an article by John Rogers. If you don't know him, he's most famous these days for being the first-draft author of that abysmal orgy of Hollywood idiocy called Transformers. Someday he may live that down, and when he does, it will be based on such trenchant observations as are made in this piece. Such as the fact that there are four times as many Americans living in urban areas as rural areas. Or four times as many people in New York City alone as there are farmers in the whole country. There are half again as many people in computer and mathematical jobs as there are in farming. And yet, the default notion of what is "Middle America" is rural, agrarian, and completely out of step with what the actual median lifestyle is in this country. This is why all these stories about "real Americans" make me want to spit nails. I've lived in the exurban South, the suburbs of Washington DC, and the heart of Silicon Valley. THIS is real America. Car commutes, satellite TV, Starbucks by the quart, straphanging on the Metro, public notices in three languages. That's every bit as American as a bunch of pickup trucks circling the Dairy Queen all night on the weekend - in fact, by the numbers, it's four times as American.

Put that in your corncob pipe and smoke it.

Vanderbilt beats Miami (Ohio). That makes five wins. Bowl eligibility requires six.

One more river to cross.

Unfortunately, the names of those rivers are Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee and Wake Forest. However, based on the way things have gone this year, you have to think that any of those can be had. And hell, if you finish the season on a 4-game losing streak, you didn't deserve a bowl bid anyway. All I ask is please, no frickin' Music City Bowl. Nothing worse than going to a bowl in your own hometown.

One of the only worthwhile things at my godforsaken undergrad institution was Chapel at Six, every Monday night. To this day it remains the model for what I look for in a church experience. They also ran a "service learning" program with the motto "College IS the real world - it's just not the WHOLE world." They were the only people there with any sense of perspective. But I digress...what if that's overshooting the mark? What if in fact, high school is the real world? And it's not the whole world - but the whole world IS high school?

Think about it. What is modern America - the politics, the culture, the attitude - but the nerds vs the jocks writ large? The punk kids versus the rednecks? The art and band nerds against the bitch gang in the girls' bathroom? Everything unbelievably superficial, nothing but scorn for sincerity, and the real problems of life completely overlooked? And here's the thing - high school comes with a built in time limit. Survive through the end of the 12th grade and roll out. But if real life has become high school, when do we get to graduate?

I think sometimes that maybe I really do need profound psychological help. It would explain a lot - like my profound distaste for contemporary high school movies, my abiding love for Heathers, my tendency to still identify with the just-slightly-weird-enough kids, my obsessive interest in gifted education for somebody who doesn't even have children...The fact that I can still see the patterns of the old days two decades on may be proof of advanced psychosis...or maybe I'm just brilliant. But if I'm so bloody brilliant, why can't I find a way to get the hell out of school?

(Or at least stop thinking so fondly of Heathers? You sure couldn't get that film made today...)