CampBlount
Please ban me. VN is toxic.
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2018
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Men, this is going to be relatively short.
We don't pay any attention to opponents' fanbase nonsense on social media -- but there IS one bit of silliness that I want to bring to your attention -- about a game of football played 100 years ago this month, here on this very field.
In its football history books, Vanderbilt lists a win over Tennessee in 1918. Tennessee’s football history — and the rest of the world — DO NOT recognize a University of Tennessee football season in 1918. That’s because so many UT students were serving their country in Europe in World War. Young Tennessee men were getting killed and maimed in the horrible trench warfare in France.
But a group of mostly freshmen and sophomore cadets at UT — called the Student Army Training Corps — wanted to carry the Tennessee banner on the football field in that war autumn of 1918. They got a late start, playing 5 games, all in the month of November. They lost 68-0 on the road at Sewanee, and the next Saturday, they lost to the Vanderbilt varsity 76-0 here at Dudley Field. Both Vanderbilt and Sewanee were Southern football powers at the time.
I don’t know why the Vanderbilt varsity players were not off in France, fighting in the trenches alongside other young men from across this great nation and this great state. I don’t know why Vanderbilt played official football that fall when so many colleges called it off while their students were helping make the world safe for democracy. Seven years after that 2018 scrimmage, a young veteran of that terrible mechanized war — a West Point graduate named Robert Neyland — came to the Hill. He pretty quickly established a NEW Southern football power.
But Vanderbilt officially lists that 76-0 win over those young guys as a full-fledged victory. They don’t put an asterisk by it with a footnote. Wikipedia says that “Vanderbilt considers the game between the two schools as an official game; however, the University of Tennessee does not, SINCE MOST OF THEIR TEAM WAS ENLISTED IN THE MILITARY FIGHTING IN WWI.”
Vanderbilt fans have been GLOATING on their message boards about that 76-0 victory 100 years ago this month, by their varsity over a group of young cadets with very little practice time and very little coaching. I guess when you’re on the short side of a 75–32–5 series record, you have to take your shots when and where you can.
Let's go out there, play hard, play loose, play close and have fun -- and win it in the names of those 11 Tennessee Volunteer cadets who took on the football powers of 100 years ago.
We don't pay any attention to opponents' fanbase nonsense on social media -- but there IS one bit of silliness that I want to bring to your attention -- about a game of football played 100 years ago this month, here on this very field.
In its football history books, Vanderbilt lists a win over Tennessee in 1918. Tennessee’s football history — and the rest of the world — DO NOT recognize a University of Tennessee football season in 1918. That’s because so many UT students were serving their country in Europe in World War. Young Tennessee men were getting killed and maimed in the horrible trench warfare in France.
But a group of mostly freshmen and sophomore cadets at UT — called the Student Army Training Corps — wanted to carry the Tennessee banner on the football field in that war autumn of 1918. They got a late start, playing 5 games, all in the month of November. They lost 68-0 on the road at Sewanee, and the next Saturday, they lost to the Vanderbilt varsity 76-0 here at Dudley Field. Both Vanderbilt and Sewanee were Southern football powers at the time.
I don’t know why the Vanderbilt varsity players were not off in France, fighting in the trenches alongside other young men from across this great nation and this great state. I don’t know why Vanderbilt played official football that fall when so many colleges called it off while their students were helping make the world safe for democracy. Seven years after that 2018 scrimmage, a young veteran of that terrible mechanized war — a West Point graduate named Robert Neyland — came to the Hill. He pretty quickly established a NEW Southern football power.
But Vanderbilt officially lists that 76-0 win over those young guys as a full-fledged victory. They don’t put an asterisk by it with a footnote. Wikipedia says that “Vanderbilt considers the game between the two schools as an official game; however, the University of Tennessee does not, SINCE MOST OF THEIR TEAM WAS ENLISTED IN THE MILITARY FIGHTING IN WWI.”
Vanderbilt fans have been GLOATING on their message boards about that 76-0 victory 100 years ago this month, by their varsity over a group of young cadets with very little practice time and very little coaching. I guess when you’re on the short side of a 75–32–5 series record, you have to take your shots when and where you can.
Let's go out there, play hard, play loose, play close and have fun -- and win it in the names of those 11 Tennessee Volunteer cadets who took on the football powers of 100 years ago.
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