Anchor Drop, June 6, 2018: 87 days

Good morning.

We are now 87 days away from Vanderbilt’s season opener against Middle Tennessee State. 87 belongs to no player on the current roster (until freshmen get their jersey assignments, anyway), but it did belong to Jordan Matthews during his time at Vanderbilt, which is good enough for me.

The big item of news from yesterday is that Vanderbilt will host a Super Regional against Mississippi State this weekend at Hawkins Field, in spite of Hawkins Field only seating 3,700 spectators to the 13,000 that Dudy Noble Field seats, and in spite of the CMA Fest being in Nashville this weekend. It turns out that playing in a stadium that is not currently undergoing major renovations is pretty important. Also, in spite of the CMA Fest, there are probably still more hotel rooms available in Nashville than there are in Starkville on weekends when nothing is going on, which is every weekend.

In any case, the first game will be played on Friday at 7:00 PM and will be broadcast on ESPN2. Saturday’s game will start at 8:30 PM and will be televised on ESPN. Sunday’s finale, if necessary, will be played at 5:00 PM on ESPN2.

Also, Connor Kaiser, Reid Schaller, and Chandler Day were all selected in the MLB Draft on Tuesday.

Tweet of the Day

My God, if only Dennis Dodd hadn’t contextualized this quote...

If they’re going to make it wet, let’s get it wet. If they’re going to keep it dry, let’s keep it dry.

We nominate this to be the motto of the 2018 Vanderbilt football season. Vanderbilt Football: Let’s Keep It Dry!

(You know what we’re talking about. If you don’t, one of our commenters will gladly explain it to you.)

Off the West End

Oh look, a Tennessee quarterback transferred.

Joe Lunardi still doesn’t think Vanderbilt will be a tournament team (or even close, for that matter.) Jerry Palm, on the other hand, has Vanderbilt as a 9-seed. It is now true that Jerry Palm is a more accurate prognosticator than Joe Lunardi. Note that this was decidedly not true in 2017, when Palm stuck to his guns and insisted that because a 15-loss team had never been selected, a 15-loss Vanderbilt team would not be, either. You will recall that Vanderbilt’s 2017 team did, in fact, make the tournament.

(Strangely, both were correct in assessing Vanderbilt as not a tournament team in 2018.)

Delaware made betting on sports legal. Delaware is a state that mostly exists to profit off other states, so it makes sense.

The Philadelphia Eagles got disinvited from a White House visit because reasons, so instead, there was a celebration for Eagles fans, but it’s not clear how many of them were actually Eagles fans since some of them apparently didn’t even know who the Eagles’ starting quarterback was.

Neither the Cavs or Warriors plan on visiting the White House, either.