They get to the training room about 10 minutes earlier every day during the week. They fight through leg cramps in the middle of practice. They push themselves just a little bit harder each day leading up to Saturday.
This is what a typical Southeastern Conference football player goes through in the week before a game against a major rival. In a conference studded with true college football superpowers and half a dozen wannabes, the egos of fans, coaches and players alike run amok during the preparations for a game against a school’s gridiron nemesis. So if you were to ask the average Vanderbilt fan who the Commodores’ biggest rival is, the response should be straightforward.
We hate Big Orange.
The University of Tennessee has been the anathema to the Commodores for decades in all manners of sports, but especially in football.
Twenty-three consecutive victories by the Vols in the series between the SEC East schools almost made the “rivalry” a moot point. Last season’s thrilling comeback victory in Knoxville by the Dores reignited the passions between the two schools, but even the most casual fan has to admit that while there isn’t much love lost between the Vols and the Dores, there isn’t much hatred either.
While the Dores should not need any additional motivation going in to a game against any conference foe, perhaps the Black and Gold Nation needs a new game to circle on their schedules at the beginning of the season. They need an adversary whose past on-field antics against us are just insipid enough to rile up the crowd and stoke the ire of an often less-than-enthused fan base.
We need to start hating Gator Nation, too.
The Dores should look at their game this Saturday against the University of Florida Gators as their new archrival game. Last year’s highly controversial double-overtime loss to the Gators in The Swamp should be enough to get the current crop of players excited and ready to play. But the Dores have taken abuse from the coaches, fans and players from Gainesville for far too long not to really get pumped up to play the Gators this year.
Former Florida and current South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier did his part to anger Commodore fans every year the two played. In 1996, with the Gators ahead 35-0 at halftime of the Commodores’ homecoming match, Spurrier chose to continue throwing the ball and running up the score in the second half en route to an embarrassing 70-0 victory. When Spurrier entered the NFL in 2002 as the head coach of the Washington Redskins, he remarked at his hiring press conference that the NFL would be more difficult than the college game because “there aren’t any Vanderbilts in the NFL.”
Anyone who has had the misfortune of being recognized as being associated with the visiting team at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, where the Gators play their home football games, knows that being verbally assaulted and having bottles and other debris thrown their way is a part of the tradition that Gator fans enjoy.
Last season’s trip to Gainesville was no different as the small gathering of Commodore supporters who made it to the game were greeted by endless hours of malice from the mostly inebriated home fans.
Granted, there is something to be said for taking the high road in any disagreement and treating opposing teams and their followers with respect. But Commodore fans shouldn’t expect that sentiment to be returned next year in Gainesville. An entire slew of colleges would call their most important football game each season the one against the Gators, and we should be added to that list.
