Vanderbilt tight end Brandon Barden is on to something when it comes to what isn’t working for the Commodores:

We have to put points on the board to help our defense to gain the win. We didn’t do that today.

No kidding. Barden is right, but he may be guilty of an understatement. Except for games against Miami (Ohio) and Rice, the Dores’ offense has struggled virtually all season. The break-but-don’t-bend defense, which provided its usual strong performance during today’s loss to Duke, has carried the team all season. It shut Duke down all four quarters, but that still wasn’t enough for the offense to overcome. The problem seems to be that the Dores’ D is top 25, but the Vandy offense may be bottom 50. At least right now, those numbers don’t add up to six wins.

It’s unbelievable to be writing this after the first few weeks of the season, but I think the Dores are done. Vanderbilt showed very little life this afternoon in a terrible and embarrassing 10-7 loss to Duke, one that may very well extend the Commodores’ postseason drought yet another year. Coach Bobby Johnson said what he’s supposed to say following Vanderbilt’s third consecutive defeat:

I told them we have four more games to play, four more important games. We have to stop talking about doing things and start doing things. Keep our heads up and try to keep chugging away, but we are far from finished … 5-3 is not bad, but you’re as good as your last game. We have 4 more on the schedule as far as I know and we will be there to play every one of them.

If it were still August, I’d agree with Johnson that 5-3 would be not only “not bad,” but spectacular. Since the three losses followed five straight wins, though, 2008 is beginning to look a lot like 2005, the last time the Dores flirted with a breakout season. I hope I’m wrong, but after today, I’m pretty sure the flirting is over.

Yesterday’s installment of the Nashville Geek Breakfast was another fun morning of tech talk. Though ringleader Dave Delaney was absent while caring for a sick child, the large and rowdy group carried on and made the best of it. (We missed you, Dave. Hope the Delaney family gets well soon.) Here are a few things I didn’t know before I darkened the door at Noshville 24 hours ago:

• Paul Van Hoesen has spent a lot of time in distant lands, such as Germany, Holland and rural Tennessee. Regarding the last of those locales, Paul’s company is dedicated to extending broadband access beyond urban areas to help reduce the digital divide.
• If you’re ready to dismiss that divide as insignificant, don’t. Would you believe that none of the students in a high school class Paul addressed recently in a rural Tennessee county knew what a podcast was? No one. Only four of them owned an iPod. Considering that we’re talking about a group of teenagers here, that’s startling.
• Dolphini Networks is the reason why Barcamp Nashville was able to use the Sommet Center for its site location last weekend. As a Preds sponsor (thanks, guys!), Dolphini is free to use the team’s logo and colors in its promotions, but not the faces of its players. Thank the NHLPA for that last part.
• Based on the location of her hometown in Pennsylvania, Julie Moore is practically Amish. Considering that she drove to Noshville for yesterday’s breakfast and that she works for Dolphini, though, she probably isn’t.
• Kate O’Neill can go to sleep at 2 a.m. and still attend a breakfast meeting at 7:30 the same morning. That’s impressive.
• Bill Seaver did not drive to Noshville in a car covered in its entirety with Post-It notes. But if he had, he knows what company would take credit for the idea.

It was good to see everyone as usual. See you next time!

Former Commodore football players Tavarus Hogans and Andre Woods have some sage advice for their current counterparts:

“This season is great,” Woods said. “Especially if we get this sixth win. They’ll etch themselves in history.”

Both Hogans, who lives in Tampa, Fla, and Woods, who lives in Houston, said people have been congratulating them about Vanderbilt’s success this season, particularly after the school’s appearance on ESPN’s College GameDay. “People want to see Vandy win,” Hogans said. “I’m even getting some people come up to me and say ‘atta boy.’ [But] We don’t need to party too soon.”

Virtually no one would have forecast the results Vanderbilt has generated on the field this fall, but Dores fans know all too well that the team has been here before. A 4-0 start in 2005 resulted in a 5-7 season after a humbling home loss to MTSU.

The details may be different, and the Dores may be one win closer to bowl eligibility, but one thing is very much the same: Vanderbilt can’t take any wins for granted. Win this weekend, and much of the pressure fades away. Lose to Duke, with Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee and Wake Forest on the horizon, and things may shift southward in a hurry. Vanderbilt needs to start fast, finish strong and keep the Blue Devils backpedaling this weekend. Go Dores!

There will be plenty of defensive talent on display tonight at the Sommet Center. The Preds’ success against Calgary this evening–and for the entire season–will depend in large part on how Nashville’s defensemen perform.

The 2003 NHL Entry Draft held in Nashville offered a bumper crop of quality defensemen. Nashville’s Ryan Suter, the seventh player overall taken in the first round, Calgary’s Dion Phaneuf, the ninth player selected in the first round; Nashville’s Shea Weber, the 47th player overall taken in the second round and Kevin Klein, the third player picked by Nashville in the second round and the 37th overall, should all be on display tonight at 7 when the Flames and Predators meet at the Sommet Center.

Although offense has rarely been a source of strength for the Preds, Nashville’s shown early on this season that it can score goals when it needs them. It hasn’t shown that it can stop opponents from doing the same on a consistent basis, as high-score setbacks against St. Louis, Dallas and Columbus attest. The Preds have long been lauded for their depth at the defenseman position, and that’s true even though the team selected Ryan Suter over Dion Phaneuf in the 2003 draft. If Nashville is going to qualify for its fifth consecutive postseason this coming spring, that depth had better translate into strong defense soon.

I usually agree with Gail Kerr, but I think she’s missed the mark today with her column comparing downtown noise limitations to fairy tales such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

Guess what happened next? The clubs closed down. The tourists stopped coming. Downtown Nashville was, once again, a ghost town. The moral of the story? Silencing Nashville’s honky-tonks would be akin to flattening the Smokies so tourists could get to the outlet malls faster.

No one is suggesting that honky tonks be “silenced,” only that the noise be reduced to reasonable levels late at night. If it’s working for Austin, Texas, another hot destination for live music, surely it could work here. Last time I checked (earlier this year), the only ghosts there were the “spirits” stocked behind the bar at every popular nightspot. There were zero indications that downtown Austin was turning into a ghost town, but there were plenty that it was very much the place to be.

Striking a reasonable balance between tourists’ and residents’ needs downtown seems like the right approach to me. It’s great that tourists once again feel welcome downtown, and I think we should make sure that residents do, too.

The season may well hang in the balance for Vanderbilt as Duke visits Dudley Field on Saturday. A win will make the Commodores bowl eligible for the first time since 1982, and it will take much of the pressure of a team that has so far exceeded expectations. Yesterday’s respectable road loss to Georgia won’t matter much in the grand scheme if the Dores take care of business at home against an improved Blue Devils team.

“We’re not happy, but we think we can build on it,” Coach Bobby Johnson said after his team’s second straight loss. “If we’d come down here and not met the challenge of playing this team, I would have worried. But our guys were ready to play and played hard. That’s what I wanted them to do, play hard. “We thought if we did, we’d have a chance to win in the fourth quarter. We had a fair chance to at least tie it.”

There’s been much to be excited about on West End this fall. We’ll know whether that trend will continue by this time next week. Go Dores!

If it’s good enough for Austin, it ought to be good enough for Nashville. I think expecting reasonable limits on late-night noise is an appropriate thing to do:

[T]he 85-decibel standard matches the limit in Austin, another music-driven town, and is much louder than Manhattan’s. The standard actually would give the clubs more leeway than downtown establishments that are outside the central business district, which would violate the proposed ordinance if their music was “plainly audible” from the nearest residence, [Council member Mike] Jameson said.

Manhattan is an amazing city because of its nightlife and its residents. I’m thrilled that Nashville continues to have a vibrant downtown nightlife that attracts locals and tourists, and I want to see residents keep moving to the central part of the city, too. When people live downtown, it makes it a more welcoming a safer place for everyone. There’s room enough for both singing and slumber downtown.

I agree with Stephen Drachler:

The God I pray to is neither Republican nor Democrat. I don’t believe God has designated the United States as another promised land, better than other nations. I believe God has given those of us who live in the United States the challenge to make this world a better place. That’s clear to me. And that’s a mighty challenge. (Or, maybe, an Almighty challenge.)

No matter where you may fall on the political spectrum, I hope you can agree that doing petty things to yard signs (photos above) and threatening elected officials does much more harm than good.

Metro Police are investigating a series of harassing phone calls and e-mails, which were threatening in nature, made to Councilman Eric Crafton and his family over the weekend. Metro Police spokesman Don Aaron said the phone calls and e-mails contained threatening remarks. So far no arrests have been made and no arrest warrants have been issued, Aaron said. “The police department is taking these messages very seriously,” Aaron said. The messages were centered around the proposed English Only charter amendment, which has been pushed by Crafton since earlier this year.

As emphasized during last week’s forum on civility prior to the Belmont presidential debate, hostility isn’t helping anyone, and it sure isn’t steering America in the right direction. I disagree with Crafton’s English Only amendment and think is is misguided and harmful to our city and to individual residents in our community, but behavior such as this only makes things worse. Hostility does nothing but divide, and more division is the last thing America needs.

It’s easy to assume that these examples of hostility are a sign of our increasing societal decline. Before you write America off, though, keep in mind that Obama, McCain and all the rest of them have nothing on the mud that was slung when Thomas Jefferson and others were on the campaign trail. Maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem, but we can still do better by embracing respect instead of wrath when it comes to political discourse.

I sure wish Coach Bobby Johnson had made this move this time last week, but I still think starting Mackenzi Adams at quarterback gives Vanderbilt its best chance for success on the field this season:

“Mackenzi came in and did a good job. Looking to see what he can do with it,” Johnson said at his weekly news conference on Monday. “He’s a motivated young man, a go-getter, and we think he maybe can provide a spark and hopefully we can get some things going on offense. We weren’t very good against Mississippi State.”

Johnson said Adams the coaching staff decided to go with Adams in part because of the dimension he gives the Commodores in the passing game. “He can sit in the pocket and figure things out and see who’s open,” Johnson said.

There isn’t much of a passing game when Nickson is under center, though his nagging shoulder injury may be playing a part in the situation. Though Adams deserves the starting job, Nickson is talented and shouldn’t languish on the sidelines. I’d like to see Johnson use Nickson as an occasional curveball during games to keep opponents guessing. Whatever the rest of the season may hold for the Dores, it has to be more promising with Adams leading the team. Good move, coach, even if it’s one game too late.

This is a harsh thing to say on the heels of what has been an incredible Vanderbilt football season (until today), but Commodores Coach Bobby Johnson is solely responsible for a bitter 17-14 loss to Mississippi State in Starkville this afternoon.

After backup quarterback Mackenzi Adams led Vanderbilt to an upset of Auburn that lifted the Commodores into the top 15 and within striking distance of bowl eligibility, Johnson inexplicably started quarterback Chris Nickson against the Bulldogs. In the most important Vanderbilt football game since World War II, Nickson piloted the ‘Dores to barely 50 yards of offense through three quarters and set up what turned out to be the winning touchdown with a terrible turnover in the red zone. Adams led the team to a quick score but ultimately was no match for a stout Bulldog defense stacked against him late in the game. 

This is a tough, tough loss to swallow on the heels of what has been an amazing and unexpected run, but I’m cautiously optimistic — barely – that it won’t spell doom for the rest of the season. With the 2005 collapse fresh in fans’ mind and decades of futility in the rear view mirror, I only have one question for Johnson: What the hell were you thinking?