Anchor Drop, August 29, 2019: 2 Days to Kickoff

Good morning.

Vanderbilt football’s season opener against the Georgia Bulldogs is 2 days away. Deuce Wallace, as his name might suggest, wears #2 for the Commodores. After serving as Kyle Shurmur’s backup in 2017, Wallace missed last season but is back to maybe-possibly-but-Derek-Mason-isn’t-saying be Vanderbilt’s starting quarterback this season. And there’s the other #2, redshirt junior safety Frank Coppet, who started six games last season, made 30 tackles, and had three interceptions.

Derek Mason is back with the second season of RTI Journey.

Two stories from the Hustler: Alyssa Muir writes about the “Big Three” terrorizing opposing defenses, and they also dish out SEC power rankings (spoiler: Vanderbilt is #10, and ranked ahead of Tennessee.)

Somehow, this week’s Vanderbilt game is the most expensive in college football.

But on that subject, this comment yesterday from WestEndMayhem struck a chord with me:

Obviously no major sportswriter is expecting a Vandy win. Nobody ever expects a Vandy win. But after reading volumes of articles and pieces and comments about this coming game, the tone of UGA fans are driving me up a wall.

Perhaps I am reading too much into it. Or it is all confirmation bias at this point. Yet the overall attitude from UGA fans strike me as “new money”. Reminding everyone how easy this game will be, how they will be wiping the floor, taking over the stadium. Bama fans weren’t like this. THEM ain’t like this. UGA wasn’t like this last year.

Because, yeah, that’s pretty much it. It’s one thing for another team’s fans to show up in large numbers at Vanderbilt Stadium; this happens at literally every SEC home game, because Vanderbilt doesn’t have a ton of its own fans showing up and because Nashville’s a cool city to visit and a relatively easy drive for most SEC East teams and Ole Miss. But the scores of articles about the number of Georgia fans who will make the trip and how they’ll outnumber the poor Vanderbilt fans is on a new level. It’s more than a bit obnoxious. I mean — and I don’t say this mildly — some of these fans are acting like it’s their own damn stadium. It’s on the level of the time that Vol fans passed around the meme of checkerboarding Vanderbilt Stadium, except that was just humorous (especially since they lost the game.)

Of course, Vanderbilt could help matters by not putting them on the side of the stadium directly across from the cameras.

I normally don’t link Bleacher Report, but they wrote about Ke’Shawn Vaughn, so there’s that.

Off the West End

Not that I pay a ton of attention to the NFL, but how Brock Osweiler continues to draw interest from actual NFL teams is incredible.

From The Athletic ($): What makes you think Georgia can win it all this year?

Scoreboard

MLB: Brewers 4, Cardinals 1 ... Yankees 7, Mariners 3 ... Phillies 12, Pirates 3 ... Nationals 8, Orioles 4 ... Indians 4, Tigers 2 ... Reds 5, Marlins 0 ... Braves 9, Blue Jays 4 ... Cubs 10, Mets 7 ... Twins 8, White Sox 2 ... Astros 8, Rays 6 ... Royals 6, A’s 4 ... Red Sox 7, Rockies 4 ... Dodgers 6, Padres 4 ... Rangers 3, Angels 0.

Oh, yeah! There’s college football on tonight. The NFL has basically killed Thursday night college football — except for in Week 1, because NFL season hasn’t started yet. There’s one SEC game on tonight — Texas State at Texas A&M, at 7:30 PM CT on the SEC Network. ESPN has a doubleheader: UCLA-Cincinnati at 6:00 PM CT, Utah-BYU at 9:15. The ACC Network debuts with Georgia Tech-Clemson. And, what you really came here for: South Dakota State at Minnesota, 8:00 PM CT on FS1.