Ted's Blog

Vanderbilt football is a lesson in humility. The team is just never that good and seems to be the official Homecoming team of the SEC, since opposing teams can count on a win against us. Mom invited me to come up to Athens to watch the Vanderbilt-UGA game on Grant's TV, but why would I want to sit through hours of agony as my team loses? This week Vanderbilt plays Arkansas, ranked No. 10 in the country. I wasn't even paying attention to football today until about 3:00. Flipping through channels I was surprised the Arkansas game was on TV, but there was a commercial so I got online to check out how bad we were losing. Very much to my surprise Vanderbilt was up 28 to 20 over Arkansas at the end of the third quarter. Of course, I checked it again to see if I had read it correctly and yes, that was the case.

I flipped back to the TV and Vanderbilt even had the ball. The first play I witnessed was a screen pass to the left and Vanderbilt got a 30-40 yard gain to get inside the Arkansas 20 yard line. Holy cow. The next play the quarterback kept the ball and ran straight ahead into a wide open field, getting a first down inside the 10 yard line. A running play tacked on another few yards, now inside the 5 yard line. Vanderbilt is about to go up 15 points over a ranked team! How can they mess this up, I'm thinking? How about fumbling the ball? Next play, Vanderbilt fumbles the ball. I turned the TV off before the Arkansas player could run it all the way back into the end zone. For a Vanderbilt fan, this is good defense: turn the TV off before the other team can score. Turns out Arkansas went for a 2 point conversion and tied the game. The game is still on, but the ending is certain. I only had to watch 3 plays.