Vanderbilt Football

On a rainy night in Nashville, Tennessee, the 2012 NCAA football season kicked off. Vanderbilt hosted the ninth-ranked South Carolina Gamecocks and head coach Steve Spurrier in a highly anticipated match.

In their first three possessions, the Gamecocks had two turnovers. Although Vanderbilt, under the direction of head coach James Franklin, could not convert on scoring off those turnovers, they remained a contender in the game.

On the next series, with seven minutes remaining in the first half, the Gamecocks intercepted and returned it for 37 yards. The Commodores answered with a 78-yard reception touchdown from Jordan Rodgers to Jordan Matthews.

Going into halftime, it was tied 10-10, and South Carolina's quarterback Connor Shaw was visibly hurt, with a shoulder injury to his throwing arm.

Shaw would not start the third quarter until South Carolina's third series. Vanderbilt took the lead 13-10, with 6:02 to go in the third quarter. Junior kicker, Casey Spears, hit a 44-yard field goal to give Vandy the lead.

With 11:30 remaining in the fourth quarter, Shaw tries to run it in on first and goal. He falls short and re-injures his shoulder. Shaw leaves for a play, but Marcus Lattimore drives it in-two plays later—to put the Gamecocks back on top, 17-13.

Commodore kickoff returner, junior DB Andre Hal, answers on the kickoff with a 52-yard return, setting the offense up in good field position. Again, Vandy cannot convert on the series, as the visiting defense would sack Rodgers for the fifth time with five minutes left in the game.

The Gamecocks would maintain possession and the lead, Lattimore, finished with 110 yards and two touchdowns. Connor Shaw, with a shoulder bruise, completed 67 yards in passing (with one interception) and 92 yards in rushing to lead his team to a victory.

Game Notes: Vanderbilt's Jordan Matthews would finish with eight catches, giving him 147 yards in receiving and one touchdown.

Kali Mann is a sports correspondent for Duhamel Broadcasting and can be reached at kali.mann70@gmail.com

The South Carolina Gamecocks, ranked No. 9 in both of the major preseason polls, waste no time beginning their SEC season. They start off with a season-opening conference game against the Vanderbilt Commodores Thursday night in Nashville (7 p.m. EST, ESPN).

As of Tuesday afternoon, most sports books tracked by OddsShark.com were listing South Carolina as 6.5-point favorites with an over/under of 45 total points.

And many fans were backing the top 10 status of Steve Spurrier's team, with nearly 65 percent of the consensus action on South Carolina as of Wednesday. Vandy might have something to say about that if recent history repeats itself—they were 3-0 against the spread (ATS) last year as a home underdog.

South Carolina returns 11 starters from a team that went 11-2 last year, 6-2 in SEC play and beat Nebraska in the Capital One Bowl. Among the returnees are QB Connor Shaw and RB Marcus Lattimore, but only five are back on the defense that ranked No. 3 overall in the country last year.

On the other side of this matchup, the Commodores get back 15 starters from a team that went 6-7 last year, only 2-6 in the SEC and lost the Liberty Bowl to Cincinnati. Among the returnees are a senior QB in Aaron Rodgers' younger brother Jordan, a 1,200-yard rusher in Zac Stacy, three along the offensive line and seven on the defensive line. 

"South Carolina has won three straight in this series and beat the Commodores 21-3 in 2011, outgaining Vandy 367-77," football handicapping analyst Jack Randall said in an interview.

South Carolina covered as 15-point home favorites, and the game played way under its total of 49.

In fact, the last three games in this series have all played under the totals.

The Gamecocks are also listed at around -270 on the money line at various college football betting outlets, with Vandy getting around +230 to win this game outright. The spread had moved to -7 at Bovada earlier Wednesday.

Pick: We'll go with a top 10 team giving less than a touchdown and take South Carolina. Big home dogs have not been a good bet in recent years.

Hard work paid off for one Vanderbilt walk-on athlete, and we all get to benefit from the warm and fuzzy feeling provided from this video. 

The video posted over at Yardbarker features Vanderbilt football players having a regular meeting, nothing special of note. 

Things start to get more intense as coach James Franklin talks about the intangibles being brought by walk-on fullback Marc Panu. 

His highlights are being shown for the team, and one hit has them all captivated. 

He then pauses to reach for a paper and announces that this young man who has given his all would be rewarded with a scholarship. 

The crowd goes wild. 

The Associated Press via Yahoo! Sports has more about this 21-year-old who has some financial comfort to go along with the respect he earned from the staff and the rest of his teammates. 

Panu is a four-year walk-on who is also a former All-State linebacker from Whitefield Academy in Georgia. 

When he isn't setting harsh blocks, he is busy attending to his studies where he hopes to graduate with a degree in chemical engineering. 

There are so many negative stories floating around college football. It's great to finally see a young man awarded for tireless effort. 

That's doing it right. 

Follow me on Twitter for more serious swag. 

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Player-run practices are over and coaches are back in coaching mode. While the focus is on football, developing team chemistry is a part of the responsibility of every coach, so team-building exercises are a part of any preseason plan.

Vanderbilt head coach James Franklin knows this.

Vanderbilt's players and coaches recently held their "dance-off" before the start of a team meeting during fall camp and posted footage of the event on YouTube. 

The result was legendary.

The dance-off may be for the players, but Commodore offensive line coach Herb Hand (who is a great follow on Twitter, if you're into that sort of thing), stole the show with a flawless rendition of "The Worm" (0:22 mark).

Hand displays good form, brilliant execution and impeccable style in his interpretation of the classic dance move.

This is the beauty of YouTube and the Internet. This kind of stuff has always gone on, but now it's able to be distributed to a mass audience in short order. It also shows that lighter side of fall camp, and adds personality to the sport that largely went unnoticed.

Excellent work, Coach Hand.

(H/T: @SIHolly)

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Don't look now, but Vanderbilt is on a tear.

Commodore head coach James Franklin scored perhaps his biggest recruiting win of the offseason on Tuesday, when 4-star cornerback Ryan White flipped from Louisville, according to Barton Simmons of 247Sports.com.

White is a Louisville native. He ranked as the No. 23 cornerback in the country, according to the recently released 247Composite.

White is the third 4-star player to commit to the Commodores in the class of 2013. Currently, according to 247Sports.com, that class is ranked No. 26 in the country.

This is Vanderbilt that we're talking about.

There is still plenty of time for this class to fall apart, but that's not something I would count on. Franklin led the 'Dores to a bowl game in his first season, and was a few breaks away from posting an eight- or nine-win season.

This is the same James Franklin that was considered the fall back after then-Auburn offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn passed on the Vandy job before the 2011 season.

It's safe to say that Vandy is happy with how things turned out.

It's unlikely that Vanderbilt can achieve sustained success at the level that traditional SEC East powers Florida, Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina have achieved; but there's no doubt that this isn't the "same old Vandy" anymore.

James Franklin deserves a ton of credit for that.

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When James Franklin was hired as the head coach for the Vanderbilt Commodores in 2010, he knew he had a steep challenge ahead of him.

The Commodores were coming off back-to-back seasons of only managing two wins, and there was no reason to think that Franklin was going to be able to change that anytime soon.

Franklin has embraced that challenge ever since the day he was introduced as head coach, and he's wasting no time turning this program in a positive direction in more ways than one.

For starters, Franklin got the university to fund $31 million for a new indoor practice facility. That's a lot of money for a school to spend that has historically not paid much attention to athletics in comparison to other SEC schools. Having a respectable practice facility is vital to whether or not the Commodores are going to be able to recruit with their SEC counterparts.

The Commodores current 2013 recruiting class ranks 17th according to Rivals.com, and most class rankings have them ranked at least in the top 30. Being ranked that high was absolutely unheard of before Franklin arrived. In fact, the Commodores 2009 recruiting class ranked 71st.

It's still puzzling that it took this long, but finally a Vanderbilt football coach is using the school's academic prestige as an advantage instead of an excuse.

Not to say that former head coach Bobby Johnson didn't use the same message, but he certainly wasn't as effective with getting it across.

Another thing to notice is the buzz about Vanderbilt football is the new uniforms that were recently unveiled. Uniforms might not add more wins to their record next season, but it still plays into that notion that the Commodores are distancing themselves from what they once were.

Something as simple as new uniforms also helps energize these young kids to get excited about the upcoming season.

Much like the uniforms, another cosmetic upgrade for this program is their stadium upgrades. The construction is at full-speed in order for the upgrades to be done in time for their season-opener against South Carolina on a national stage.

Future prospects pay attention to stuff as simple as how the field looks on national television. Most of your coveted prospects do not want to play in a stadium that doesn't present itself well on the big stage.

Finally, no one can blame Franklin for not doing everything in his capacity to get the fan base energized. Vanderbilt doesn't have the gigantic fan base that most SEC schools enjoy, but Franklin is once again making sure he gets every ounce of fan support for his players this upcoming season.

Current players have to appreciate that, and you better believe that potential recruits also notice that.

All of these positive things that Franklin is doing in such a short amount of time will gradually allow the Commodores to get over the hump. Stanford has proven that with the right head coach, an highly academic school can still enjoy a lot of success in college football.

Franklin can't change what has happened in the past with this program, but he's proving that he can certainly change where it's going.

It's always been a tough road for the Vanderbilt Commodores as members of the SEC East, but head coach James Franklin is instilling hope that things could be dramatically changing.

With a ton of returning starters on offense, the Commodores should be able to have one of their better offensive seasons than they've had in several years. The defense also has plenty of returning starters, but some key losses to graduation will need to be filled.

Once again, the schedule will be a challenging one, and the addition of Missouri from the Big 12 will add another element to that challenge.

Still, the Commodores have about as favorable of a road schedule as you can ask for in the SEC; no trips to Gainesville, Knoxville and Columbia are always a plus.

That's not to be confused with Columbia, Mo., though, where the Commodores will pay their first visit on Oct. 6. This could be a huge swing game for the Commodores and whether they can achieve one of their best conference finishes in decades.

Actually, Vanderbilt has arguably the easiest schedule out of the SEC's 14 teams. Auburn also will make its first trip to Nashville since that upset in 2008 that sent the Commodores to a 5-0 start that season.

With all of the hype Franklin has created since he became head coach back in December of 2010, the Commodores should finally see what it's like to have some valuable home-field advantage at modest Dudley Field.

Most of the powerhouses on their schedule will have to come to Nashville, which is better than the alternative. The question is how much better the other SEC East teams have gotten as well; after all, the Commodores still have an enormous amount of ground to make up to be contenders in the best conference in college football.

Tennessee figures to bounce back from a couple tough seasons under Derek Dooley, and Tyler Bray will help Tennessee present a tough test for even the best of defenses. Florida was uncharacteristically average last season, but it will have another top-notch defense in 2012.

The cream of the crop in the SEC East looks to be Georgia, with Aaron Murray returning at quarterback as a solid Heisman candidate. The Commodores will have to go to Athens to take on Georgia in September, and it figures to be a loss just based on the talent gap alone. That is, unless Jordan Rodgers can figure out a way to match Murray's production, but that's a discussion for another day.

However, the Commodores have the opportunity to string together some impressive wins after that, as long they're truly not the same old Vanderbilt.

What gives this Vanderbilt team the chance to actually compete in the SEC this year is its evolving offense. 

Virtually all of the offense is returning, with emphasis on the receiving corps that will be led by Jordan Matthews and Chris Boyd.

In years' past, the anemic Vanderbilt offense couldn't even muster red zone attempts, much less compete on the scoreboard in SEC contests. We saw a little taste of that last season when the Commodores managed 20-plus points in six SEC games, and all of those games were winnable.

There's a good chance that the Commodores can duplicate that this season, with Franklin having another year to mold this team into his own. The Commodores were just a few unfortunate breaks away from having an eight-win season in 2011, and eight wins is a fair prediction in 2012.

Now, realistically, are the Commodores going to push for an SEC East crown in 2012?

The answer is probably not. The Commodores still have the talent gap to deal with, but the recent recruiting results should continue to level the playing field in future seasons.

As for 2012, the Commodores no longer have excuses. The time is now for them to make a splash of their own in the SEC East.

Maybe not a big splash, but still a splash.

2012 Predicted Finish: 8-4 (4-4), fourth in SEC East

The SEC Blog will be counting down the top 150 players in the SEC every day, concluding on Aug. 30, at the start of the college football regular season.

62. Jordan Matthews, No. 87, Vanderbilt Wide Receiver

2011 stats: 41 catches for 778 yards and five touchdowns

Strengths

Vanderbilt hasn't been the most prolific passing team in the SEC, but that hasn't stopped Matthews from establishing himself as one of the SEC's premier wide receivers. At 6'3", 205 pounds, Matthews has the size to go up over opposing defensive backs, runs crisp routes and can make defenders miss in space.

Weaknesses

It's likely that, despite a solid season in 2011, Matthews hasn't unlocked his potential. Jordan Rodgers hasn't locked down the starting quarterback spot yet, but he certainly appears close to doing so. Stability at the quarterback position might be all Matthews needs to take it to the next level.

2012 Prediction

Vanderbilt is going to be an interesting team to watch in 2012. It's clear that there's a lot of talent, particularly at skill positions on offense with Matthews and Zac Stacy. If those players can capitalize on 2011, we could be see some legitimate offensive firepower in Nashville.

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