Anchor Drop, October 15, 2019: At Least Times Are Interesting

Good morning.

So, to sum up where the coaching staff stands after watching the quarterbacks in fall camp and now having six games worth of action and all of the practices in between, we have this:

Right. It’s still an open competition, just as it was for all of August. Hell, now Allan Walters’ name gets thrown in there for the first time, which sounds like Mason may well have been saying “fuck it, let’s try Allan Walters.”

And if you’re not confused enough yet, Chris Lee mentioned on his podcast yesterday that his source tells him Mo Hasan was told he’d be the starter on Saturday. (You should actually give that a listen at work today, Chris and Mitch Light have some really interesting insights about what’s going on with the football team right now.) Which might explain the cryptic tweet sent from Hasan’s Twitter account on Sunday night...

Oh, screw it, we’re playing four quarterbacks on Saturday, aren’t we? Does Stephen Rivers have any eligibility left? Meanwhile, take what you want from these quotes...

Look, I’m not going to say that these times are fun. They are not, not at all. But things are interesting, in the same way that the four-month Robbie Caldwell era was interesting, in the sense of a 2-10 football team with a coach who talks about inseminating turkeys at SEC Media Days. Now, Derek Mason hasn’t gone that far yet, but today’s press conference (which of course I will watch and report back to all of you) will either top Caldwell’s SEC Media Days appearance or else it will be the usual garble of computer-generated coachspeak that I watch every week.

It will probably be the latter. However, never forget that Robbie Caldwell has more championship rings than Philip Fulmer.

In other news, Vanderbilt men’s golf is in second place after the first round at the Crooked Stick Collegiate, just two strokes behind Georgia. The event concludes today.

Meanwhile, the XFL’s inaugural draft is today, and Bruno Reagan hopes to become the first former Commodore in the XFL.

Off the West End

Oh no, LeBron, what is you doing...

Meanwhile, here’s Dan Wolken on why this is such a godawful look for LeBron. Within the past few weeks, LeBron has made a big deal about how terrible it is that college athletes can’t get paid for their name, image, and likeness, but apparently actual suffering in Hong Kong just isn’t very high on his list of priorities. Or at least not if it interferes with his ability to market his name, image, and likeness to a country of 1.4 billion people.

Scoreboard

MLB Playoffs: Nationals 8, Cardinals 1.

NFL: Packers 23, Lions 22.

NHL: Bruins 4, Ducks 2 ... Wild 2, Senators 0 ... Panthers 6, Devils 4 ... Islanders 3, Blues 2 ... Sabres 4, Stars 0 ... Avalanche 6, Capitals 3 ... Blackhawks 3, Oilers 1.

Euro qualifiers: Bulgaria 0-6 England ... France 1-1 Turkey ... Iceland 2-0 Andorra ... Kosovo 2-0 Montenegro ... Lithuania 1-2 Serbia ... Moldova 0-4 Albania ... Ukraine 2-1 Portugal.