Playin’ ‘Nice’ With Anchor Of Gold

Well... Saturday sucked. But now LSU gets to play maybe the worst team in the SEC? Maybe? How’s this gonna go? We asked Vanderbilt nihilist Tom Stephenson from Anchor Of Gold for a realistic preview of Saturday’s game.

1. What Football Gods did Vanderbilt anger that resulted in y’all having to play LSU two years in a row?

It is clear now that we are still paying penance for our decision to remain in the SEC in the 1960s instead of putting our tails between our legs and going through a 50-plus year trek through independence, the C-USA, and now the AAC. Basically since the football gods cannot give you Tulane as an annual sacrifice, they have given you Vanderbilt.

2. What advice do Vandy fans have for LSU fans on how to deal with a shitty defense?

You have two options here. One, you can learn to love the Big 12-style shootouts like we did during the Jay Cutler years, who I swear to God would have gotten to play in a bowl game if that defense could hold anybody under 35 points. The other option is to pair the shitty defense with a shitty offense, in which case you simply develop a drinking problem. It is my understanding that this already describes most LSU fans so you should be able to deal.

3. Are you concerned the lack of LSU fans at Saturday’s game will hurt the Nashville economy?

Since LSU was not on the schedule until two months ago, Nashville had already planned to make up for their absence with pedal taverns and mobile hot tubs and various other bachelorette party shenanigans, and those are for some reason still allowed, so we’ll get by.

4. With the 3-0 Tennessee Titans currently suffering a COVID-19 outbreak, will there be extra pressure on Vandy to win as Nashville’s other football team? Or is everyone just focusing on the Vols instead?

You son of a...

Ahem.

There is never any pressure on Vandy to win, because nobody is that stupid. If you care about winning, you pick a different team.

5. Unlike the 2019 matchup, this game will be played at night. How will this affect Vandy students’ study schedule?

I reject the premise of this question. This implies that Vanderbilt students attend or watch Vanderbilt football games, when it is a seemingly annual rite of passage for the student newspaper to chastise the students for not attending the games. In fact, when I was a Vanderbilt student, the university had to go so far as to shut down the student tailgate area at kickoff in order to “encourage” the students to actually go to the game instead of, uh, binge drinking in the parking lot.

6. Even though Joe Burrow eviscerated the Commodores’ defense last year, now-starter Myles Brennan threw a pick-six in mop-up duty. I don’t have a question here, just wanted to point out something for y’all to be excited about.

To be fair, pretty much everybody eviscerated the Vanderbilt defense last year and I thought I had a point here but I’m not sure what it was.