2015 Vanderbilt Position Previews: Towel Manager

Associate Director of Towel Operations/Football Callie Overholt

*Overholt [not pictured], was in charge of keeping her friends dry while they applied body paint.

Overholt, brought over to the football staff after two impressive years as Head Towel Intern for Tim Corbin's baseball team, has perhaps the most important position on this year's staff.  Last year, though highly qualified for the job, Ms. Overholt, a junior double majoring in Climatology and Material Science, was passed over for what can only be described as a myopic nepotism hire in Bruce Dorrell-Klein, nephew of then Offensive Coordinator Karl Dorrell.

In retrospect, this botched hire was endemic of the failure of the early part of the 2014 football season.  Dorrell-Klein, after resigning a similar post at Bed Bath and Beyond under inauspicious circumstances (reportedly mislabeling the thread count of towels and sheets), was brought onto staff as a favor to his mother, Cynthia Dorrell-Klein, without having to undergo the oft rigorous application process for the job.

"I thought, umm, you know, 'it's just the towel boy process.  What's the worst that could happen?'" said a visibly distressed Coach Mason at the post-game press conference following the loss to Temple.  "At that point in time, man, we just felt like, we just felt like, man, we just needed to... you know, maybe establish, you know, a different type of rhythm. We needed to... uh, we needed to find ourselves in a situation, uh, where... where, where we were just trying to uh you-know-I-mean jump start, um, or cardiac our [towel situation] a little bit. You know, just in terms of what it was because we had, you-know-I-mean, gone through that process... uh... you-know-I-mean I thought [Bruce] you-know-I-mean missed a couple of [towels] early, you-know-I-mean was under duress a little bit... uh, they pulled his eyes down a couple times... but this... this isn't about one guy."

Though Coach Mason's eloquent attempt to shield blame from Dorrell-Klein proved effective at the time, further inquiry into the situation by Anchor of Gold's crack research team unearthed more damning evidence.  According to Head Equipment Manager Chris Singleton, Dorrell-Klein was lost from day one: "Bruce was always confusing the Used pile with the Clean pile, confusing hand towels with bath towels - stuff like that.  I should have double checked that day [the day of the opening game against Temple], but I was testing the pads and affixing chin straps to helmets.  I didn't think I had to worry about the towels.  I mean... they're towels.  How can you mess that up?"

Though new Associate Director of Towel Operations/Football [a position created immediately after the Temple loss] Callie Overholt would not comment on Dorrell-Klein's repeated errors in judgment, her roommate, sophomore Electrical Engineering major Suzanne Reeble, claimed, "You saw the Temple game, right?  Do you think their hets were dry?!  He had one job.  Come on!"

According to Vanderbilt Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Professor M. Douglas LeVan, the opening game het-wetting can only be ascribed to substandard towel dryness.  "My research is focused on 'the prediction of the performance of fixed-bed adsorption systems over repeated cycles,'" said LeVan, placing two swatches of a towel into two empty petri dishes on his lab desk.

Levan then proceeded to add an eye-dropper of sweat to only one of the towel swatches, leaving the other to serve as the control group.  "Watch as I rub both towel swatches on different halves of my het.  Dry on the left, wet on the right.  Now feel my het."

The left side of his het remained dry, whereas the right side was sopping wet, and incapable of going into a football season with any semblance of a rational game plan.  The results were conclusive.

In new Associate Director of Towel Operations/Football  Ms. Callie Overholt, Derek Mason has a towel manager with a track record of excellence.  In her two years with the Vanderbilt baseball team, Overholt kept their hands and brows dry enough to compete for back to back National Titles, winning in '14.

Former baseball players have been effusive in their praise, with first overall pick Dansby Swanson crediting Overholt for almost all of his success.  "You've seen my hair, right?  Who do you think manages to keep it the perfect combination of moisturized, yet never allowing one drop of sweat to fall into my eyes?  That's Callie.  She's a pro."

However, our optimism must be tempered here, as towel mismanagement was not the only flaw seen during the 2014 season.  Though this factor has seemingly been appropriately addressed, Coach Mason has not made one personnel move in the Facilities Management department, specifically in the Waste Management division, which was negligent at best in 2014.

Editor's Note: You, the reader, likely attended and/or root for the Vanderbilt Commodores.  You should be able to easily identify this as satire.  No one actually said any of these things, people.  Or if they did, their words were hilariously taken out of context for the amusement of the author.