Show Me My Opponent, 2023-24: Vanderbilt, Part One
On death's Dore
Two stories. One: the nicest thing you can say about 2023-24 Vanderbilt is that they haven’t packed it in all the way yet. They’re pretty bad, obviously, but when you’re 5-13 and 0-5 SEC with exactly one close game in the last month you look for whatever positives you can find. And, well, hey: 4-3 ATS from December 23 onward. That’s not nothing. Ole Miss (was +10, lost by 13) and Mississippi State (+13, lost by 13) were close calls, too. After dramatically imploding for about 1.5 months they’ve settled in as a normal bad team. Sort Torvik from December 19 onward and they’re not even last in the SEC. (Arkansas. Can you believe it?)
The other is that I’ve been playing with Google’s Street View a decent bit lately. I turned 30 recently, which people at my day job tell me is a minuscule number but is still pretty wild to me. I’ve been going back and looking at old streets I used to live on or areas I lived near/in while in college. I even found out the rowing center near my house was a Chinese restaurant for 30 years. Most of this Street View process has been pretty heartwarming and brings back good memories.
Until I went to the Nashville ones.
I can remember how normal this all felt; how it felt as if it could be this way forever. How enjoyable it was to walk through downtown. How you could park at the Library for $7. And, well, how much more fun Predators games were. (They’re back to being this way, but for a few years it was pretty annoying.) That was 12 years ago, by the way, barely any time at all. And now.
When I think of New Nashville, I do not think of Broadway or the bachelorette stuff or Barmageddon (yes) or how it’s $25 to park at the Library now or how they’re building a new stadium like 20 years after the last one. I think of the Apple Store. The large, gleaming Apple, feet away from the state’s first Big Four professional sports arena. Who goes there? What is its purpose? Has there ever been a singular entity more emblematic not of a city’s decline, but of its shift from charm to charmlessness? I think not.
Anyway, Tennessee travels to The City Formerly Known as It City to take on a 5-13 Vanderbilt team where the main storyline is what percentage of the crowd will be wearing orange. It has the vibes of a mid-December affair with Cleveland State more than it does an SEC game, because the goal is the same as those games: don’t become a trending topic. And don’t go to the Apple Store on Broadway. Please.
BEHIND THE WALL ($): A, not The, Dore Report