Thursday, July 26, 2007

Motivational Bashing

As many of you are aware, this week the ESPN staff is ranking the 119 Division I-A football programs over the past decade. Aside from demonstrating how little they have to do in the middle of the summer, this task has put them in the rather awkward position of splitting hairs between teams that are very difficult to compare, particularly over such a long period of time.

Vanderbilt is ranked 98th out of 119 teams. Considering the overall record (.256 = ouch) and lack of bowl appearance, I'm not shocked at this. What I find interesting is the blurb they write:

Vanderbilt has no chance of legitimately competing in the SEC. The administration isn't supportive enough from a financial or admissions standpoint, yet it doesn't want to lose out on the paycheck. Thus, the result is Vandy's spot among the least competitive programs within the "Big Six" conferences over the past 10 years.


Two points:

1) No chance of legitimately competing in the SEC? We were a moronic excessive celebration call and a field goal or two away from going to bowl games the past two years, putting up wins at Tennessee and at Georgia. In the past three years we've lost 9 conference games by less than a touchdown. Is that not "competing"?

2) What's this about the administration not being "supportive enough...from an admissions standpoint"? If what they're doing is advocating lower admissions standards for football players, then (a) they lose all moral authority for dogging the programs that serve only as NFL prep and not as (primarily) educational institutions, and (b) they've got no room to applaud a school like Wake Forest for "doing it the right way."

I'm hopeful that Vandy could be in the Top 75 on a list like this in five years. Although I can't say I'll be holding my breath to see how they adjudicate between Utah State, Duke, and Florida International.

6 comments:

Douglas James said...

I agree with everything just said. Also since this blog sometimes posses as a D.C sounding board I thought I would mention that a guy from my high school is making his MLB debut for the Nationals tongiht. Plus the Phils are right on the Mets tails and have been real hot lately so I need D.C to come up big for me tonight.
http://washington.nationals.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20070725&content_id=2108642&vkey=news_was&fext=.jsp&c_id=was

Stanimal said...

Be more worried about the Braves after they get Teixeira.

Stanimal said...

Also Earl gets some love from my home town paper, even though I think they're a group of idiots. Tony "Mr. College Football" Barnhart has Earl ranked as his #3 "Player I'd pay to see.

http://www.ajc.com/blogs/content/shared-blogs/ajc/cfb/entries/2007/07/26/five_sec_stars.html

Douglas James said...

I don't think this factors in to ESPN's rankings but if you look at the teams directly ahead of us very few (Tulane, Memphis, Illinois) have produced a good amount of NFL talent. Say what you want about Vandy getting smacked around the SEC but we have put out some solid pros in the past 10 years (Cory Chavous, Hunter Hillameyer, Jay) which i think proves that we aren't the 98th school in Division I-A.

Anonymous said...

That sounds like it could have been directly lifted from the reader comments of The Tennessean for any given story about Vanderbilt football. Ignorant Vol fans are always saying that kind of garbage.

ryan.mccostlin said...
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