Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Vanderbilt Hotline: Less is More, Edition

As we have all come accustomed to, less is more when it comes to Vanderbilt stories in the news. What few stories there are (and trust me, there are few), are good ones.

We'll start with David Climer's piece in today's Nashville Tennessean about plans to upgrade Vanderbilt Stadium "into the 21st Century." As usually, DeFKA Guru (see glossary below) is hitting on all the right chords. It really is about time for the school to put money into the football facilities that the fans enjoy. With that said, much like this Hotline, less is more as far as Vanderbilt Stadium is concerned. At least for the time being, Vanderbilt is well advised not to increase capacity above the 39,000+...that is, until they can sell it out on regular basis. The way the school proceeded with Hawkins Field, both with the brick facade, and the ability to expand capacity when there is demand, is the way to go. In the meantime, if you are looking for some spending money, and are going to be at the stadium anyway, might as well make some cash. With Nashville Night slated for September 1, its clear Vanderbilt Stadium will be rocking all season long.

Brett "the man we love to" Hait (thanks Andrew for the new nickname) has a story in today's Nashville City Paper that brings a smile to my face. CBJ has landed his 10th and 11th committment for next season. What excites me the most about these recent commitments is the addition of kicker Ryan Fowler of Eastside High in Taylors, SC. As Brett writes, according to Ray Guy of ProKicker.com, Fowler is the fourth-best kicker nationally. Special Teams has been a problem for some time, but last year in particular, our kicking game (or lack thereof) cost us at least 2 games (Arkansas and Ole Miss). If Vanderbilt can add a reliable kicker to their already burgeoning arsenal of talent, it's yet another step in the right direction.


Poolboy is back with Thought #34, read it, he is hillarious.

This will be my last Hotline for the next few days, but starting next week, we will have our Football previews out. Keep the conversation going. What do you think of the glossary? What kind of improvements would you like to see the team make to Vanderbilt Stadium? We want to hear from you.


Finally, since I won't be here the rest of the week, I wanted to give a quick shout-out to the soon to be Mr. and Mrs. Boyer in the District who are making it legal this weekend. Congratulations y'all...a word of advice, keep Woody on a short-leash, he's bound to come out of his shell when there are nuptulas involved.

Bobby, Out.

3 comments:

Douglas James said...

I'm bored at "work" as usual so I thought I would talk about Vandy's 2008 football recruits so far. Please chime in with your thoughts. Checking out ESPN's recruit tracker gives me mixed feelings. We have 5 solid recruits (grade 74 and over) and 11 overall after just 16 last year and I think the base is their for a very good recruit class. There are also still alot of recurits who are considering Vandy that are rated at 75 or better. That being said a couple things disappoint me 1) we don't seem to be recruiting any real strong CB's. This is an area that I think we need a lot of improvement yet haven't seemed to get even moderately high regarded recruits lately. 2) I would really like to see Vandy get 1 or 2 big time guys every year (I see that as a player in the ESPN Top 150) We didn't get any last year and don't seem to be that close this year. That being said a big year from the team could change that. 3) Finally most of the big recruits left seem to be QB's and WR's which are two positions we have been strong recruiting recently. While this is certinly good I wish we could get some other positions stronger particularly RB, CB and DE. That about all I got.

Stanimal said...

no bowls = no 150 recruits.

Anonymous said...

It's true that the football stadium needs upgrades, and it's good news that they're going to do something about it. But does anyone else think the execution of this story in The Tennessean today was kind of strange? First of all, it was an opinion piece, not a hard news story, so the tone tended to be kind of snarky and conversational. The title is kind of a sarcastic cheap shot. The timing of this entire thing is strange, too, with no actual plans being unveiled by VU. It's like Climer just decided the stadium needs renovations, asked the DeFKA Guru about it and wrote a column about it - which is fine, except - where's the news? And finally, since when is an opinion piece, especially a sports-related one, an above-the-fold item on the front page of the newspaper?!!

Very strange, I thought.