In November 1982, USA Today was just two months old, President Ronald Reagan was in his first term, the Soviet Union was knee-deep in Afghanistan, and Knoxville, TN had just wrapped up its hosting of the 1982 World’s Fair. The Tennessee-Vanderbilt football game was played in Nashville that year, and a funny thing happened — Vanderbilt won. They haven’t won since. Until today.
Vanderbilt, the school that runs its football team under the rubric of its intramural department. Vanderbilt, known for its academics and being the divinity school of choice for one Al Gore, Jr. Vanderbilt, the whipping boy.
Vols, next week you play Kentucky, a school whose perennial battle cry is “just wait ’til basketball season.” I’m asking you — pleading with you — lay off the turkey this week until you get this win. I don’t even want to contemplate the alternative.
Jared, I don’t know if it was the Vols’ lack of effort or the ‘Dores’ ability to finally pull off the close-upset.
As for the intramural comment, apparently our intramural department is good enough to beat your full-time, one-gender-at-a-time Men’s Athletics Department; not only in basketball and baseball, but also in football. And do it without pseudo-criminal players who major in “Urban Studies.”
As for next week against the ‘Cats, I hope you get the win: if for no other reason than it makes Vandy look better.
I was in Nashville watching Alama Mathews adn Whit Taylot tie the vols in knots and watching the rain dissolve the orange and white pompoms.
It took my uncle until Johnnie Jones to recover from the trauma.
I hope he wasn’t in Nashville yesterday.
And out of the woodwork they come…
It’s good to see you Vandy guys here on a decidedly pro-Vol blog. I almost forgot Vandy had fans. Feel free to gloat here all you want. It’s not every generation you get the chance to do so.
Dillon: I’m curious about your comment on our “one-gender-at-a-time Men’s Athletics Department.” If Vandy had a men’s athletic department, of how many genders would it consist?
You’ve had 22 years to work on your smack talk…and that’s the best you can come up with?
I was in Knoxville at the World’s Fair that summer. I wonder if that means something. Perhaps just my obsession with Tennessee, since my previous comment was about Gatlinburg. Ah, well, I have family there and my father was born in Pikeville, so Tennessee is in my blood, I guess.
Here I am… realizing why church was so silent on Sunday morning! I thought it was my preaching!