The Night That "Same Old Vandy" Died: One Fan's Chronology of the Commodore Roller Coaster

By Andrew Hard

September 4, 2004: My first Vanderbilt football game as a freshman. The student body is quite small -- about 7,000 undergraduates -- so there is plenty of time for all 1,800 or so freshmen to run through the tunnel, past the inflatable helmet, and across Dudley Field. I know nothing of Vanderbilt football to this point, just a lowly first-year aimlessly meandering from one yard line to the next, wondering why hordes of my peers are wearing our oversized matching gold t-shirt over top of sun dresses and bowties (why would they dress like that for a football game?). As I scan up at the less-than-sellout crowd at Vanderbilt Stadium, one thing immediately strikes me -- there is too much South Carolina maroon in this place. From the start of our horseshoe-design all the way to the 50-yard line ... you'd think you were smack-dab in the middle of Columbia.

Little did I know what I was getting into when I made that long walk from the north end zone to the very top of the student section. "Wait, they already scored?", someone asks when we finally reach the stands about 7 minutes into the game. Yup, South Carolina had taken the opening kickoff and driven right down the field for a touchdown. Welcome to Vanderbilt football.

October 9, 2004: To those who were there, it is known simply as "The Rutgers Game." Vanderbilt had just beaten Mississippi State for its first SEC home win since World War II -- or at least that's what the seniors were telling me. We actually had a chance to win 2 straight? When Jay Cutler throws a 27-yard TD pass to Erik Davis on the opening drive of the third quarter, Vanderbilt is up 27-3. Could this finally be the turnaround, the upperclassmen ask? Could third-year coach Bobby Johnson actually be the savior this program needed?

There's a phrase that James Franklin hates, even more than a reporter asking him who the 'Dores are playing next week: "Same Old Vandy." This game was my first indoctrination into exactly what is the "Same Old Vandy" -- the week-after-week invention of new ways to lose, the expectation in the crowd that defeat will be imminently snatched from the jaws of victory. In just 25 minutes, Rutgers ripped off a 34-7 run, taking a three-point lead with under a minute to play. Of course, from his own 20-yard line, Jay Cutler then heaves one downfield on the next drive, a cannon of a pass that is miraculously caught somewhere near the Rutgers 20-yard line. It would have set up a game-tying field goal attempt.

Of course, Cutler is called for being over the line of scrimmage when he threw the pass, a flag that is thrown well after the pass is caught and is blatantly contradicted by the jumbotron replay (of course, we probably would have missed the field goal anyway). Same Old Vandy indeed.

November 5, 2005: After starting 4-0 in Cutler's senior year, Vandy dropped four straight (including a home game to MTSU when the Blue Raiders blocked a last-second field goal that would have won it) and came into the Swamp needing to win 2 of 3 to become bowl eligible for the first time since 1982. Down 35-21 in the fourth quarter, Cutler worked magic. A touchdown pass to George Smith gets it within 7. Onside kick, Cutler again, a touchdown pass to Earl Bennett with under a minute left!

We're gonna go for two, right? We've GOT to go for two! Bobby Johnson wants to go for two, Cutler wants to go for two -- but the refs don't. Bennett gets called for excessive celebration on the touchdown for what I would term a "mild hip gyration." No ball thrown into the air Jake Locker-style, no strutting into the end zone Brad Wing-style, no pig pile coordinated team celebration like the '99 Rams. Just a college kid happy to score the biggest touchdown of his life.

Cutler throws a pick on the first play of double overtime. The Gators avoid what would have been the biggest Vandy win in decades and their first in Gainesville since 1945. Slightly buzzed and severely disheartened, I lose it when an unsuspecting freshman girl in the room sees Chris Leak being interviewed after the game. When she remarks, "he has such pretty eyes," I shoot back:

"DON'T EVER SAY SHIT LIKE THAT AGAIN."

(Yup, it's my sophomore year, and Vandy fandom is already taking its toll)

October 14, 2006: It's the first game between the hedges for Chris Nickson -- Jay Cutler's replacement, a quarterback who started his college career with games at Michigan and Alabama. Welcome to big-boy football. Today, Nickson makes everyone forget about Cutler, throwing for 190 yards and 2 TDs en route to a shocking 24-22 upset of Georgia at Sanford Stadium. Bryant Hahnfeldt kicks the game-winning field goal with two seconds left, and I hug the mascot and drop to my knees on the sideline (I was covering the game for our school paper).

A win at Georgia is a big deal for most teams. For me, and doubtless for all of the 300-or-so-it-seemed Vandy fans in the crowd that day, this win felt like so much more -- a sign that we could compete with the big boys, a sign that Vandy was no longer the 'Dore mat of the SEC, a sign that since I'd been there, things had really turned around, and goddamnit I was gonna be a part of the best Vanderbilt football run in school history. This was the spark that was going to turn the entire ship around, and no red, orange, blue, or maroon clad fan could tell me otherwise.

For one day, it was great to be a Vandy fan.

November 17, 2007: The thing about "Same Old Vandy" is that when that game-losing spark ignites, you know it right away. No matter what brief momentum seems to stop the other team's comeback, you know that it won't be enough to prevent the inevitable landslide to a soul-crushing loss. When this happens against your biggest rival, against a fan base that actually believes that it's better to be a deer-huntin', tobacco-chewin', Natty-guzzlin' redneck than attend a good college, have a good job, and drink quality beer and wine, the loss is doubly soul-crushing (Note: Tennessee fans actually think this way. This rough comparison between Vandy and Tennessee was on the front page of some Knoxville newspaper on the day of this game, with the tagline "You forgot whining vs. winning").

For some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to travel with my dad to Neyland Stadium to see if Vandy could win at Tennessee for the second time in three years, to see if the 'Dores could finally become bowl-eligible my senior year (for the first time in 25 years), to see if the corner that was turned in Athens could keep turning in Knoxville. When Vandy scored with 9 minutes left in the third to go up 24-9, it seemed like it was all worth it. The stadium may have been 99.9% orange, but it felt like the Vandy fans that were there were taking over the place.

Then Broderick Stewart roughed the punter.

24-9 became 24-16, then 24-22, and finally, 25-24. Neyland was jet engine-loud until D.J. Moore brought back the ensuing kickoff to the Tennessee 42. The sphincter of the crowd, orange and black-and-gold alike, collectively tightened. "Could we actually snag back victory from the jaws of defeat?", we asked. "Yur tellin' me we done might actually lose to 'dem rich boyas?", Tennessee fans asked. When Bryant Hahnfeldt's 49-yard field goal attempt traveled not through the uprights, as it had in Athens, but off the left upright and straight to the ground, we had our answer.

Same. Old. Vandy.

Bobby Johnson led Vanderbilt to its first bowl win in 53 years and its first win over Tennessee in 23 years. But he finished his tenure at 29-66, a winning percentage of .305. And he was a dead ringer for Steve Martin.

October 11, 2008: After starting 5-0 to begin the 2008 season, Vandy rolls into Starkville ranked No. 13 in the country, its highest since 1956. Naturally, I made the 5-hour drive from Atlanta to see if Vandy can extend perfection. In a sea of cowbells, chewing tobacco, and putrid offense, I watch the beginning of the end of what could have been a truly remarkable season. It took until game #6, but Same Old Vandy was back, dropping this one to 1-4 Mississippi State and looking nothing like the comeback kids that took out Auburn on national television the previous week.

With a 6-6 record, Vandy made (and won) the Music City Bowl in 2008, its first bowl appearance since 1982 and its first bowl win since 1955. But after that 5-0 start, the Commodores went 6-26 in their next 32 games. Even in mild success, Vandy found its way into more prolonged failure: Larry Smith, a freshman who started that bowl game, was Vandy's starting quarterback through most of 2009 and 2010, amassing a 47% completion percentage, 16 total TDs and 12 INTs in those years. Smith was so bad, I'm pretty sure we started the "Jor-dan Rod-gers" chants while he was still in high school.

November 6, 2010: Just 22 months removed from that Music City Bowl victory, the Commodores hit rock bottom. I'm not sure what my lasting memory is from the Robbie Caldwell era -- that he spent his SEC Media Days press conference talking about his days on a farm in South Carolina inseminating turkeys, that he brought to every press conference a Southern drawl reminiscent of 1860s Charleston, or that I almost gave up on Vanderbilt football after a second straight 2-10 season in which the Commodores were outscored by an average of 27 points in their 7 SEC losses.

I left Vanderbilt Stadium at the end of the second quarter with the Gators ahead 41-0. The seasoned, hardened Vandy football veteran in me is waning fast as I apologize to the undergrads around me, that they don't know what they're getting into by rooting for this team. I ask one girl how she can continue to root for this team when they're this pathetic.

"I've been a Vandy football fan my whole life," she says. "Why should I give up now?"

I guess 7 years isn't a lifetime, but it had sure felt like it following this team. In that moment, I didn't have her optimism, her blind faith, or perhaps just an unconditional school pride. I was ready to give up.

September 17, 2011: To think, Vandy fans were irate that Gus Malzahn turned down what was rumored to be a $1.5 million head coaching offer in order to remain the offensive coordinator at Auburn. James Franklin was a second choice -- an unknown coordinator from a program (Maryland) that we knew nothing about. "You can't win here," we told him. "For god's sake, it's VANDERBILT football." The same rhetoric from the end of that Florida game, that rock bottom game, crept into my head too: does this guy know what he's getting into?

If someone asks you how many games it takes to turn around a football program as a new head coach -- to get the fans believing, to get the boosters and the athletic department behind you, to get people to really care again -- the answer is three. By the time Vandy finished off Ole Miss by a whopping 30-7 score, I believed again. This wasn't the same belief I had when we beat Georgia in 2006 or when we limped to that 6-6 record in 2008. This guy was really going to take us places, I thought.

6-6 felt good in 2008. But it felt better in 2011. Something was brewing with Coach Franklin...

November 17, 2012: Vandy football is not meant to come with expectations. Expectations of winning, expectations of beating certain rivals, expectations of making bowl games year after year -- these are not things we are trained to believe. Same Old Vandy means that expectations will always be let down. Even a win that seems inevitable in the third quarter will find a way to slip away. Even a team that is clearly more talented than the opposition will find a way to lay a stinkbomb (hell, this even happened to Vandy BASEBALL, who we all KNEW would win the title in 2007). To keep our emotions in check, Vandy fans do not come with expectations -- it lessens the blow when they don't happen as you expected.

This game had many of the symptoms of a Same Old Vandy game. Inferior opponent? Check. Vandy's on a hot streak? Check. Rivalry game? Check, check, check. Devastation should the Commodores blow it? Let's just say that Derek Dooley came into this game 4-18 in SEC play. If Tennessee had won, that means Dooley would have OWNED Vanderbilt -- 3-0 against the 'Dores and 2-18 against everyone else. If we couldn't even beat Tennessee with Dooley at the helm, when would we ever beat them?

And yet, you couldn't find a Vandy fan in the house that night expecting anything but an ass-whooping of the men in orange (and there were a lot of fans -- 65% or so of Vanderbilt Stadium was black and gold, which is roughly 64% more than your average Vandy-UT game). Not only was Vandy more talented; for once, they were better coached, better trained, and better motivated. How could we possibly screw this one up? We all believed in Coach Franklin -- he wouldn't let it happen, right?

At halftime, Vandy held a slim 13-10 lead, and we all sat on those cold, gray bleachers for the most nervous 20 minutes that I can remember. Then the third quarter began. I'm not sure the word "surreal" can completely capture the feeling that comes about when your team drops 28 straight points on your rival, validating everything you believed about that team, your coach, your players, your expectations, your will to carry that team on your back in any way you can. Tennessee, the team that kicked us around for 30 years, that wouldn't even call us little brother because they had "better" rivalries with Alabama and Florida, was down and out. 30 years of frustration was unleashed in one swift 17 1/2 minute span.

Everyone in black and gold stuck around until the bitter end, some crying, some deliriously cheering, some hugging random strangers, but most in shock as to how to react to what they just saw. But no matter how we reacted, we all knew one thing that night: that corner, that one corner we've always been looking for, well we had finally turned it. Vanderbilt football was not only worth rooting for again, it consumed us and gratified us more than it ever had before.

That night, my friends, was the night that Same Old Vandy died.

--The Road to 592 is a pipe dream started by a diehard Atlanta fan with a sparse history of truly great sports atmospheres (being Atlanta and all). Read up on my unending pursuit here and check out the full list of venues here. For those sick of conference realignment, you can also relish in another pipe dream of mine -- the 28-team SEC. Follow me on Twitter @andrewhhard.