DISGUST

1 : to provoke to loathing, repugnance, or aversion : be offensive to
2 : to cause (one) to lose an interest or intention

Vanderbilt lost today and disgust just about sums it up. Our play during the game provoked loathing, repugnance and aversion more than I can adequately recount and I only wish it could make me lose an interest in future games. You see, we didn't just lose. We lost to a terrible UT team and lost our last chance to beat a Phil Fulmer coached team. To properly put this in perspective, this is a UT team that lost to Wyoming, yes Wyoming (!), at home a few weeks ago.

It's hard to know exactly where to start processing my thoughts on the game. We admittedly played terrible and didn't look anything like the team that managed to beat UK last week to become bowl eligible for the first time since 1982. It's been so confusing to be a Vanderbilt fan this season. We have sometimes been improbably good. Early in the season, our players seemed to believe they could win - and they did. Then things went predictably, terribly wrong and we lost four games straight including a mind-numbingly painful homecoming loss to Duke. As a Vanderbilt fan, I am used to my team losing. It's the five wins followed by four losses that cause confusion. When I had given up all hope, we beat UK last week to seal the deal started in the 5th week of the season.

Even with losses to teams we should have beat like Mississippi State and Duke, today's game was the worst of the season. While watching, I was in the kitchen working on dinner, so I wasn't watching the game closely. When I heard the crowd roar, I would check in to see what was going on. This was a home game for Vanderbilt, but more often than not, the crowd roar was for a UT play. It sickens me for there to be more UT fans at a Vanderbilt home game than VU fans. This should NOT be the case. It's bad enough to live in a state that swathes itself in a hideous shade of orange for a large part of the year. To not be able to fill our own stadium with black and gold for a game like today's is a travesty.

During the fourth quarter, I had to restrain myself from telling A, "Don't be a Vanderbilt fan. Cheer for a team that wins, honey."