OneManGang
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Tennessee vs The Maxims vs Vanderbilt
Well, I reckon it's time to come clean. There are reasons the last three of these maunderings have been delayed. I could just state that I started a new job and so forth, but it's a part-time gig, so that's not the real reason.
Of course, I spent Friday and Saturday of the Veterans Day weekend taking part in the commemorations at Sgt.Alvin C. York State Park and so missed the Georgia game and actually listened to Buckeye Bob on the way home. I've stated before that much of the criticism of Kesling spawns from the fact that he is Not John Ward, but then, who the hell could be anything else? But that is still not it.
I have visited three different football venues this month. Each left lasting impressions on Your Humble Correspondent but also wore his a** out traveling and at my advanced age such exertions require extended time for recuperation.
First up, on 6 November, I scratched one off the “bucket list,” attending the Notre Dame vs Navy game at Notre Dame Stadium. As one who played as a member of “The Fighting Irish” of Knoxville Catholic and proudly bore that title, going to South Bend for a game has been a dream for decades. As to the experience, let me say this: These people know how to “football!”
The entire set-up is designed to give the fans of either side the best experience possible, All over campus, there are “Guest Service” people in green sport coats to point you in the right direction or tell you when and where the next pre-game event will be. The stadium itself, “The House That Rockne Built,” is laid out so that there are no bad seats and the climb to the cheap seats (where we were) was not bad at all. Anyone who has scaled the upper deck at Neyland can appreciate that. Also, the people that run the place understand the concept of the pressure washer, something the UTAD still hasn't figured out. I don't know if we were just lucky but damned if it didn't seem that everyone involved was dedicated to seeing that fans had the best possible experience. Hell's bells, even the rest rooms were clean, well maintained, and modernized. As an aside, I went to the can at Neyland Saturday and hand o' Gawd, thought I was in a barn. Note to AD Danny White: For Chrissakes, GET RID OF THOSE DAMNED TROUGHS! Paint the rest rooms!
Finally, last weekend I went to the Titans game at Nissan Stadium. They too seem to grasp the whole pressure washer thing. There are elevators with real operators (!) to carry you to the upper decks and different food vendors hawking (imagine the concept) different foods. Even in the cheapies you have a seat with arm rests and a cup holder.
I do actually love Neyland Stadium, the history and pageantry rivals the best you can find anywhere but, BUT! UT can do SO much better and really with not a whole lot of effort. It's called doing things with class. All it really requires is attention to the details that separate a “good” experience from a great one.
*******
Confederate Gen, John Bell Hood, AKA “The Gallant Hood of Texas” was a reliable division commander, a passable corps commander and an absolute disaster as an army commander.
Last week we left the redoubtable Hood convalescing after having the femur of his right leg shattered by a Yankee Minié ball on 20 September 1863 during the Battle of Chickamauga. This wound resulted in the amputation of that leg about 4 inches below the hip. This was on top of wounds received to his left arm on the second day at Gettysburg which caused him to lose much of the function in that arm.
Hood must have had an amazing constitution as he reported for duty as a corps commander in the Army of Tennessee under Gen. Joe Johnston on 1 February 1864, less than five months after the amputation. An artificial limb was ordered from Europe and smuggled in through the Yankee blockade. Hood would have to be strapped onto his horse but that made little difference to the fiery general.
Johnston had replaced Braxton Bragg after the disastrous end to the siege of Chattanooga. Over three days, from 23 to 24 November, the Union Forces captured the key position of Orchard Knob, swept Bragg from the slopes of Lookout Mountain. Then the Army of the Cumberland under George Thomas, knocked the rest of Bragg's army off Missionary Ridge.
Grant's plan for that last action was for Thomas to conduct a limited attack at the base of the ridge to hold the Confederate's attention while Sherman and the Army of the Tennessee attacked Bragg's right at Tunnel Hill and then charged down the crest of the ridge. In the event Sherman was stymied by troops under Gen. Patrick Cleburne. Meanwhile, Thomas's Army of the Cumberland, against orders, charged up Missionary Ridge and drove the Rebels off the crest. Grant was upset that his favorite (Sherman) had been upstaged and that laid the basis for a lingering bias against Thomas.
As Bragg retreated into northern Georgia, he was relieved of command and replaced by yet another incompetent boob, Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. Johnston had first demonstrated his incompetence during the Peninsula Campaign before Richmond in 1862. He would dig in then retreat again and again until the spires of the Confederate capital were visible. Fortunately for him he was opposed by an equally incompetent boob, one George McClellan. After continued goading by Davis he finally launched a counter-attack. He was wounded on the first day and replaced by Robert E. Lee who proceeded to chase McCellan back to the Potomac over the next seven days. It can be argued that the wounding of Johnston prolonged the Civil War by three years.
Johnston had a respite as Sherman, now in overall command of the Western Theater, gathered supplies and reinforcements and rode out the winter before moving south to Atlanta.
The campaign in north Georgia proved to be a repeat of the Peninsula Campaign as Johnston kept retreating until finally the Army of Tennessee occupied the trenches outside Atlanta.
Tired of Johnston's passivity, Davis relieved him and, passing over several senior commanders, named John Bell Hood as commander. In contrast to Johnston who always took council of his fears and never met a retrograde operation he wouldn't order, Hood never saw a frontal assault he wouldn't order. In a series of four swirling battles on the outskirts of Atlanta, Hood hurled the pride of the Army of Tennessee against Sherman and Thomas. Four times he failed. Sherman cut his supply lines and Hood was forced to abandon the city.
Hauling off into Alabama, Hood dug in around Gadsden and awaited Sherman. Sherman pursued for a while and then, with his eyes clearly on the prize, turned around and began his famous (or infamous – depending on your proclivities) March to the Sea. Hood moved north with eye to crossing the Tennessee River. When informed of this, the fiery Sherman snorted, “Let him go! If he would march to the Ohio, I'd give him rations!”
Neither Lincoln nor Grant were quite so sanguinary about the idea of Hood's army suddenly appearing in Louisville or Covington and once it was clear that Nashville was the actual objective, ordered Thomas and the Army of the Cumberland there. When he arrived on 3 October, Thomas was also named Commander of the Mississippi District which at that time ran from the river to the Appalachians and from Chattanooga into Ohio and Indiana.
While he had roughly 100,000 troops under his command, most were guarding critical road junctions and bridges. His total force at Nashville was about 30,000. Hood was moving north with 45,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry.
Hood began crossing the Tennessee on 1 November, however bad weather and other delays kept him from assembling his whole force on the north side of the river until the 20th. His objectives were several, first he would capture Nashville, cutting Federal supply lines to Chattanooga, in addition he intended to recruit heavily in Middle Tennessee and grow his army. Next, he would move into Kentucky and do the same. Like Lee in Maryland, his belief that the men of the area only required a spark to flock to the Confederate banner was sadly mistaken. Middle Tennessee had been spared the privations of the rest of the South and Kentucky had been so long under Union control that few, if any, saw any future in fighting for the Confederacy.
Be that as it may, he pressed on.
Thomas sent the newly arrived XXIII Corps, a veteran outfit under Gen. John Schofield, to Pulaski to watch for Hood's approach. As Hood approached, though, Schofield got word that Bedford Forrest's 10,000 cavalry were approaching from the west with an eye toward moving behind him and trapping him between the cavalry and the 40,000 or so infantry. Thomas authorized him to pull back to Columbia.
Unable to hold the line on the Duck River, Schofield withdrew further up what is now US Highway 30 fighting a rear-guard cavalry action at Spring Hill on 29 November as he dug in across the road at Franklin.
Hood reached Franklin the next day and, ignoring other possibilities, launched a series of frontal assaults against Schofield's lines. Schofield held while the heart of the Army of Tennessee was torn out suffering over 6,000 casualties over five tragic hours. But that is another story for another time.
Schofield pulled back to Nashville. The Army of Tennessee stumbled into lines to the south and east of the city on 4 December.
Thomas had not been idle and had been gathering reinforcements and building strong fortifications in a half-circle to the south of town with both ends anchored firmly on the Cumberland River. Hood's army was in no condition to assault those works and dug in to await developments and reinforcements of their own, which never showed up.
The weather was atrocious. A winter storm blew in and temperatures tumbled and everything was coated in snow and ice. At this point, Grant began to needle Thomas to attack Hood immediately. Over the next several days, Thomas engaged in a war of words with Grant with the latter becoming ever more demanding and finally threatening to relieve Thomas of command if he didn't get a move on. The telegraph lines went down due to the weather on the 12th so Grant's order actually relieving Thomas never arrived.
Thomas would not be rushed though. On 14 December, all was ready. Thomas had conceived his plan as a “swinging door.” His left flank would engage Hood with artillery and feints while the bulk of his army under Schofield on his right would move out and outflank Hood's left and swing around behind them. The weather cooperated with temps now in the 60s as Schofield began.
The operation went like clockwork and Hood was forced to retreat or be destroyed in detail, He pulled back to a new hastily constructed line anchored on a prominence now known as “Shy's Hill” named for a Confederate officer killed there.
Thomas now moved the rest of his force out of Nashville and his combined divisions assaulted Hood again the next day along Hood's entire front and both flanks.
It was a rout. The proud, veteran and hard fighting Army of Tennessee shattered leaving behind over 6000 killed wounded and captured. Much of the army simply melted away. To all intents and purposes, the Civil War west of the Appalachians was over.
As the remnants of the Army of Tennessee made their way south they sang bitterly, to the tune of the “Yellow Rose of Texas:”
Oh! You can talk about your Beauregard
And sing of General Lee!
But the Gallant Hood of Texas
Sure raised hell in Tennessee!
Hood was relieved of command and replaced with – you guessed it – Joseph E. Johnston. Johnston rallied the 15,000 or so stragglers in Alabama and Mississippi and then headed east to keep an appointment with General Sherman in Durham, North Carolina, on 11 April 1865.
It was over.
Thomas's telegram telling of his triumph crossed Grant's informing him of his relief and naming his successor. The latter order was quickly rescinded.
Grant, however, could not resist one last dig at Thomas citing his lack of pursuit of the fleeing Confederates. Thomas patiently pointed out to Grant that the weather had closed in once again and that the Rebels were retreating faster than even the Union cavalry could move!
General George Thomas was now feted throughout the Union. Alongside his moniker of “The Rock of Chickamauga” he was now the “Sledge of Nashville.” The Yankee Congress passed a bill thanking Thomas for his victory, a piece of legislation that Lincoln gladly endorsed.
Grant now began to strip the western theater of troops to bolster his forces for the final push against Lee. Thomas was essentially left with a flag and a couple of guys to hold it up.
In 1868, now Commanding General of the United States Army Ulysses Grant, prepared to run for the presidency, Thomas was called to Washington to succeed him. He demurred, stating he had no desire to enter the political snake pit that was (and is) Washington.
He was sent to command the Army forces on the west coast and settled into his quarters at The Presidio in San Francisco. On 28 March 1870, while writing a response to a critical article by John Schofield, General George Thomas, a Virginian who chose to stand with the Union, suffered a fatal stroke. He was 53.
Look at the three pictures below. Grant always looked like he wanted to be somewhere else. Sherman always looked a touch mad. Thomas, though, had the clear level gaze of a born commander. He was a man who fulfilled Sun Tzu's dictum: He knew himself and he knew his opponents and he never feared the outcome of a hundred battles. He was, in this writer's humble opinion, the finest Union general of the Civil War.
********
So, how did the Vols do against The Maxims?
1. The team that makes the fewest mistakes will win.
Vanderbilt's major mistake is to have stayed in the SEC long after their “sell by” date. Yes, I get it that VU is a Charter Member of the SEC, but so were Georgia Tech and Tulane.
2. Play for and make the breaks. When one comes your way … SCORE!
That “pick six” by Tennessee on Vandy's first possession was a dandy. John Wilkerson even quoted Maxim #5 in the post-game show when describing this play.
3. If at first the game – or the breaks – go against you, don't let up … PUT ON MORE STEAM!
I remarked to Younger Son&Heir on the way to the game that you can throw out nearly every stat and record when it comes to Vanderbilt. Under normal circumstances, this is Vandy's bowl game and they treat it as such. They could literally be 0-11 but beating Tennessee would make it a successful season.
4. Protect our kickers, our quarterback, our lead and our ballgame.
The Common-Hos scored but never threatened the Vols. One hopes the injury to Hendon Hooker's hand is not serious.
5. Ball! Oskie! Cover, block, cut and slice, pursue and gang tackle … THIS IS THE WINNING EDGE.
The defense seemed to take most of the game off. Methinks they were reading all the pre-game nonsense about two 60-point games in a row and forgot that the other guys play to win as well. Also Vandy is a well coached team. Their new head coach is from the Brian Kelly tree and they run Notre Dame's offense. Thankfully, they don't have ND's talent.
6. Press the kicking game. Here is where the breaks are made.
Vanderbilt kept trying to “directional kick” away from Velus Jones and ending up with shanked punts or kickoffs that went out of bounds setting up the Vols with good field position.
7. Carry the fight to Vanderbilt and keep it there for sixty minutes,
Many moons ago, Vol legend Joe Thompson used to be on the post-game show. After a hard-fought win against Vandy he intoned, “At the end of the day, they are still Vanderbilt and we're still TENNESSEE!”
May it ever thus be so.
Suggested Reading
Benson Bobrick, Master of War: The Life of General George H. Thomas
Shelby Foote, The Civil War, A Narrative: Volume III Red River to Appomattox
Wiley Sword, The Confederacy's Last Hurrah: Spring Hill. Franklin & Nashville
General Ulysses Grant (NARA)
General William T. Sherman (NARA)
General George H Tomas (NARA)