Despite a 4th quarter rally by Vanderbilt, the Florida Gators held on to beat the ‘Dores by a score of 25-19 on Nov. 4th.
Since this was an LF special (LF=Lincoln Financial, who took over the SEC broadcasting business from JP Sports when they bought the parent financial company), the game started at 11:30am. Not exactly my favorite gametime. This meant I had to be out tailgating around 9am for this one. So I woke up around 8:30, threw on a hat, and headed over to tailgate. Not surprisingly, our normal tailgating crew was nowhere to be found. Only me and one other guy made it out. So we decided to walk around and made it to the law school tailgate party.
I am still amazed that a group of people that can tailgate at 9am for a 1pm game, can’t get out of bed to tailgate at 9am for an 11:30am game. Oh well…. The law school put on a good tailgate, except that most of the students who showed up were actually Florida fans. It almost felt like tailgating for an away game, much like the Michigan dental school tailgate. Got in a few games of cornhole, even though their set was waterlogged and the bags were more like throwing stuffed animals than bean bags.
The game got off to a bad start, with Vanderbilt having several punting/special teams mistakes leading to some quick Florida scores. With Florida leading 22-6 it started to look like Vanderbilt wouldn’t be able to get anything going. However, Chris Nickson led the team on two fourth quarter scoring drives to bring the score up to 25-19. However, Bryant Hahnfeldt’s onside kick bounced too far into Florida territory for Vandy to recover, and Florida got the one first down they needed to run out the clock.
Vanderbilt has suffered a long series of close and disappointing losses this year. However, in my estimation, their competitiveness has not looked like a fluke. In each game, Vanderbilt has looked like a team that has the ability to compete week in and week out, and the next step will involve being able to pull victories out of some of these games. Vanderbilt has only been able to do that in one instance this year, against Georgia, when a late scoring drive sealed the victory. If Vanderbilt could pull out just half of their close games, they would be a bowl-bound team.
This year the Commodores are 1-4 in games decided by a touchdown or less. If they could just move up to around .500, they would be 2-3 or 3-2 over those games, giving them either a 5-5 or a 6-4 record at this point. This will be the next challenge in front of Bobby Johnson and his staff as they move to the 2007 season. But it does feel good to be halfway through November and still have bowl possibilities alive!
The Valiant Underdog 