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Okay. This was a more pleasant Saturday morning. I woke up early, got all my weekend work done, did 10 miles, picked up groceries, made meatloaf with curried carrots, hit play on the DVR, and joined the game thread about 30 minutes into the game.
As I said in the Saturday Predictions, this game was primed to be a WWI trench warfare style meat grinder—yes, the minute I wrote that I got a hankerin’ for meatloaf, and added ground beef to my grocery list—but surprisingly turned into an offensive back and forth. Of course, allowing a Bob Stoops led Kentucky Wildcats team to hang 38 on you is not a good look for year 7 of “The Defensive Genius,” but we’re all in agreement that Derek Mason needs to be fired. Good? Good. As such, I won’t waste any more words on that. Not for now, at least.
What I will do now is point to the positive: with a patch-work offensive line, an ever-shrinking stable of running backs, having lost the Three Horsemen (Vaughn, Lipscomb, and Pinkney) from the 2019 squad, and a true freshman at QB—all during a Covid affected season—Ken “Loose” Seals and OC Todd Fitch have shown me enough to get excited for the future.
During the game, I had this thought, and I have since grown stronger and stronger in favor of it:
Who should be head coach right now? Fitch, please.
— Andrew VU '04 (@AndrewVU041) November 14, 2020
Seriously, what is the downside to this? If we find out Fitch is the man for the jerb, we don’t have to wait for a visit from the Corn Fairy to find out which coaches are interested in the Vanderbilt HC position. If we find out he’s not yet ready for it, we’ve still got an OC we can strongly advise the new coach to hang onto.
Win win, no?
All that said, did our first Moral Victory of the season move the needle on the Het-O-Meter? Dear Khaos, we implore you, how wet are our hets?
That sounds about right. We’re still likely going 0-10, but this didn’t suck hard. That’s really all we can ask of the rest of this season. That and that Mason is fired and Fitch is elevated to HC immediately, if not sooner.