Monday, November 26, 2007

Vanderbilt Apologist: The Man We Love to Hait

I am a huge fan of Brett Hait and the work he does covering Vanderbilt sports for the Nashville City Paper. But I don't know if it is possible to more strongly disagree with the premise of an article than I do with Brett's piece this morning. Hait's article, "Nickson's fall from grace tells the story for the 2007 'Dores," reads to me like Brett is excusing this utterly disastrous season (to argue it was anything short of that given this team's overwhelming talent and experience is ridiculous) on Nickson's injuries and early season struggles.

He is absolutely right that any team that loses it's starting quarterback (no less a pre-season 3rd Team All-SEC QB) is going to struggle. And while losing a player as dynamic as Nickson certainly hurt the Commies, we did not finish 5-7 because Chris Nickson spent the better part of the season on the sidelines. Despite his woeful play on Saturday, Makenzi Adams put the team in a position to win games against Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The only game where Nickson's play really hurt Vanderbilt, as far as I could tell, was against Alabama. There is plenty of blame to go around for the team's 0-4 finish, and their 0-3 record in games decided by 7 points or less. I promise Vanderbilt Sports Line will be a leading source for the post-season blame game that is absolutely appropriate given the season we just suffered through. With that said, I think Brett is letting the team off easy in today's piece.

What do you think?

Note: We don't sandbag at VSL. I have sent this post to Brett Hait and asked him to respond. If he is able, and chooses to respond, I will post his comments in this space.

3 comments:

Douglas James said...

Couldn't agree more. I think that those bad losses this year stemmed from 1) Poor kicking game (UK, UT) 2) Stupid penalty (I will never get over the roughing the punter call in the UT game) and most importantly 3) Lack of killer instict/imagination from the O-Coordinator. With the exceptions of the blow outs I think Vandy lost games because the playing calling either didn't allow the offense to step on the neck of opponents (UT, UGA) or take advantage of the other team and come back in the game (UK).

Boyer in the District said...

Dear VSL:

Please forward my resume to human resources at VU. For your consideration, I've included a video highlight tape of last Friday's game against LSU in Baton Rouge.

All Best,

Houston Nutt

Anonymous said...

Ole Miss must have been impressed.

They already hired him.

And american idol still sucks.