Coming off a nine-win season, back-to-back bowl game appearances for the first time in school history and Vanderbilt can’t sell as many football season tickets as last year?
For once, James Franklin is right to feel ticked off.
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“We remember the Sugar Bowl, I think it my junior year of high school, we let Alabama beat us twice,” Brinson said of a team that also lost to the Crimson Tide in the SEC Championship game. “We’re not letting Alabama beat us twice. In the Sugar Bowl in 2018, they… thought they should have been in the playoffs and lost to Texas.” -- AB-H, 12/27/23
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Get The Picture · Bloviation for the Dawgnation
Get The Picture 
So Vandy fans are supposed to get excited, pay $315 per seat plus a $300 donation for a home schedule of Ole Miss, Austin Peay, UAB, Missouri, Georgia, Kentucky & Wake Forest. I spent this past weekend in Nashville and found a lot more fun things to do (& cheaper) than pay that that much to watch Vandy football. The only game on that schedule I’d pay to see would be Georgia.
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There are plenty of season tickets you can buy without making a donation.
And, yeah, based on the program’s direction, there should be a few more thousand Vandy fans getting excited. Franklin’s right; the greater Nashville area should be able to support a mid-20’s base.
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Vandy basketball has also had a lot of problems this past season attracting fans. I’m not sure exactly what the problem is either. I’ve lived in Tennessee for the past 3 years and can honestly say I have yet to meet a “dyed-in-the-wool” Vandy fan.
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Yeah, I agree… I’ve been in TN 11 years and while the Vandy grads I know are proud, it has nothing to do with football. This will work in my favor, though, in trying to get the family to a Dawg game when they visit Nashville this year.
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Wow! And we complain about our home schedule. Franklin will get offered a very high paying job in a season or two and I think deservedly so.
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That is an absolutely horrible home schedule. I wouldn’t pay for that garbage either.
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.Tennessee is an orange state just like Georgia is a red state. How many tickets do they sell at Tech?
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Vandy fans love their teams, they just know that their football seasons are like a Greek Tragedy. They have become very humble. Hopefully they will keep improving.
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and we all know what follows hubris in a Greek tragedy, don’t we?
I wonder if James Franklin is a student of Greek theater?
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Doubt it! Oedipus exhibits hubris when he refuses to accept his fate. Hubris leads to conflict, if not punishment or death. He may be at Vandy, but a student of Greek Theater….don’t think so.
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As noted in the article, the home schedule is awful, and the increase in required NCC donations doesn’t help, but the Nashville area is exploding in growth, so getting more ticket holders shouldn’t be a problem…though somewhere, Pat Fitzgerald is reading this and nodding knowingly.
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Asute, my man.
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Nashville is growing at a healthy clip but I would not characterize it as a boom town just yet. I’m not convinced it can get that next gear. Condos are going up everywhere and I wonder about the absorption rate. Commercial neighbor (multifamily built above business) developments lag. New residential neighborhoods are kinda boring. Sidewalks on one side of the street and not much attention to new urban design. Yeah it is paying attention to roads and infrastructure. We’ll see if its progress can match its goals. Nashville leadership is a heck of lot better than Athens.
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Good points, but I think you have to look at the entire Nashville MSA (which includes Franklin, Murfreesboro, Brentwood, Hendersonville, etc.) The region looks vastly different than it did a mere 20 years ago. In 1990, Williamson County (immediately south of Nashville’s Davidson Co.) had 81,000 people; it now has 193,000. Over the same timeframe, Rutherford County’s population grew from 119,000 to 274,000.
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I don’t disagree with you. Some of your numbers include more than growth just from the Nashville, MSA. They’ve added growth from three additional counties in that data set.
Nashville is a great place to visit. It doesn’t have the same historical flavor as a Charleston or Savannah but events there are well done and I enjoy the music scene. My wife is a runner and we have traveled there for some of the marathon events. Nobody does it better.
just sayin’
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*Astute
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Quality home schedules are a controllable, and the lack of them is inexcusable. Look at a CFB as a product, what company would go out and seek the worst ingredients on the market and then attempt to raise prices? That said, Nashville is a really cool town but there should be more citizens involved with supporting Vandy athletics. Those other attractions are available year round, live CFB is only offered a pitiful 6-7 times a year.
Vandy exceeds GT’s success rate though, look how badly they fail when you take the 4-5 million potential humans in the metro Atlanta area to draw from. I think Franklin has given it his best effort. He will moving along soon as he has great perception nationally and there are many programs with a better chance of success that could use some help (Mizzou, Texas, Fla., Washington, BC, etc.) and can pay him well.
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Agreed. If you want people to buy tickets, maybe you should schedule better than Austin Peay, UAB, and Wake Forest.
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Wake Forest. Lke Vandy but smaller
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Mac –
Vandy can’t schedule better if they want to make a bowl.They just aren’t there yet.
They have South Carolina, Georgia, A&M, and Florida as four built in losses. Ole Miss, Missouri, Tennessee and Wake Forest could be considered toss ups. I see Kentucky as their only guaranteed win.
That doesn’t leave much wiggle room when you’re trying to get to Birmingham.
Have a good day,
BD
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We were 5-3 in the SEC last year, and we aren’t trying to get to Birmingham.
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bless your heart. You really believe that, don’tcha now, son? That’s so cute!
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Understood BD, but I would rather see better contests than prop up the record. Granted that is easier to say as a Georgia fan or Bama fan since we will make bowls anyway. It is a double-edged sword for Vandy but as a fan, if I am going to leave the quality slate of games on TV to fight the traffic and limit myself to one game, it isn’t going to be Vandy and La Tech. And that is the problem with selling season tickets these days, I prefer to cherry pick and limit my game day visits…at Vandy that might be every game.
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Realistically, though, who does Vandy schedule for an out of conference home game?
UConn, UMass, Northwestern, Army, and Wake Forest have been the type teams coming to Nashville (along with Elon).
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Tennessee and Wake Forest are not toss ups. imho. Vandy wins both of those games…..
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I concur…AHD! Mac, Having been in Nashville once a long time ago for a game; we were happy to stay in the Hotel Suite instead of using our tickets. It is just more comfortable to watch TV.
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Steele actually has the Vols picked one spot higher and the game is also in Knoxville.
I won’t be surprised either way at this point, though.
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“Franklin, in the meantime, will continue to wear of the hats of coach and salesman, although he doesn’t want to do the latter forever. He eventually wants to concentrate all his efforts on recruiting, developing and supporting his players “like a lot of these other coaches.”
I guess this means he won’t be in the running to replace Fish Fry on the Flats?
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Having lost control of the Fulmer Cup standings, James thinks now is the peak time to ream out the locals
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Who would have thought that Vandy would be challenging for the cup?
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I blame Gordon Gee
http://www.globalethics.org/newsline/2003/09/15/vanderbilt-abolishes-athletic-department/
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While reading posts, it seemed that the locals would indeed cause the numbers to fluctuate each year. Considering the natural disasters (flooding) they’ve had for the last couple of years (and now have), perhaps the locals are busier with recovery during tough times. Just a thought.
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“I really don’t want to hear about the excuses about we’re in a city and we have other things to compete with.”
Natural disasters are not an excuse for James. The locals should have more disposable income because Opry Mills was closed for a couple of years. Maybe he contact Notre Dame (but not on Mondays – Thursdays) and offer Vanderbilt up as the natural opponent
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Seriously…exactly what I was thinking.
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