Saturday Predictions: Vanderbilt at South Carolina

After obliterating Virginia Tech last weekend, Vanderbilt, 2-0 on the season, goes to face… I don’t know if “final boss” is the correct term. “Annoying constant nemesis who for some reason we can never beat?” Probably. Vanderbilt hasn’t beaten South Carolina since 2008, and if you told me that Vanderbilt had a longer losing streak to South Carolina (16 games) than it does to any opponent… well, yeah, I’d absolutely believe you. Put this way, we’re only six years away from reaching Vanderbilt-vs.-Tennessee in the 1980s and 1990s levels of futility and that was typically a much more one-sided matchup annually on paper than this one is.

Will Vanderbilt end the curse this season?

The last time Vanderbilt beat South Carolina, I was at the game…

…in the student section. A couple of law school friends took pictures of themselves with sideline reporter Erin Andrews, who was still a sideline reporter for ESPN. It was a Thursday night, and Thursday night games are something the SEC says we don’t do any more.

(It was also a pretty packed house if I remember correctly. I chalk that up not to Vanderbilt football specifically being a bigger deal in 2008 than it’s been for a lot of the intervening timeframe, but moreso to sports generally being a bigger deal in 2008. Like the student section in my three years at VU tended to not have the same attendance problems they did for much of the Derek Mason and early Clark Lea eras. Being a weirdo who preferred sitting in your dorm room and playing video games/coding instead of going to a college football game was once considered less socially acceptable.)

Anyway, if I predict it to happen, it won’t.

The Pick: South Carolina 28, Vanderbilt 21

The SEC Upset Pick of the Week: I am going to get very stupid and choose to believe that Oklahoma will go to Philly and get their HETS WET (+21.5.)

Dear Lord, the 16 year running Chicken Curse. The truth is, there have been years where we have been the better team, when we’ve been at home, when we’ve taken a lead into halftime… and nothing has mattered. Ironically, the last time we beat The Penises was when they had their best ever head coach, Steve Spurrier.

This year? Well, to be honest, coming into the year, I had this one marked as a loss. It’s in Columbia, in September, in the brutal heat of that mosquito-infested hell hole. Beyond that, they have the best QB they have ever had in LaNorris Sellers. They have some solid WRs. They have strong DBs.

…but they don’t have Diego.

He’s breaking the curse, ladies.

The Pick: Vanderbilt 34, South Carolina 31

The SEC Upset Pick of the Week: Besides us? If I had to squint, I could talk myself into the Badgers taking the Gumps to deep water and getting their hets wet, but man am I squinting hard. Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, Badger, MUSHROOM MUSHROOM!!!

The Virginia Tech win was awesome. Truly a “stand and stare” level of gridiron dominance in the second half. Vanderbilt looked better against VT than South Carolina did a week before. The Commodores also dispatched their FCS foe with even more ease than the Gamecocks did theirs. The Vanderbilt football team led by Diego Pavia, Clark Lea, Jerry Kill, and a cohort of players etching themselves into the hearts of fans and garnering national attention is seemingly finding every ghost in attic and skeleton in the basement and banishing them. The Chicken Curse is the next boogeyman.

Going to Williams-Brice to take on a Top 10 South Carolina with a first-round QB prospect seems like the most unlikely way to break the evil magic. Yet there is reason to believe with breakout WR Tre Richardson joining the known commodities of Sedrick Alexander, Eli Stowers, and Junior Sherrill. The defense looks feisty and deep at LB and DL.

And none of it will matter. It will be some heartbreaking new chapter. An egregiously bad call to erase a TD or defensive stop. Maybe a 60-yard FG at the gun. I won’t blame the team. There are supernatural forces at play here.

The Pick: Vanderbilt 24, South Carolina 27

The SEC Upset Pick of the Week: Give me Texas A&M over Notre Dame. In the battle of perennially overranked teams, the Aggies come out on top to get their hopes up.

I mean, I think we are the better team, but does that matter? After a decade-and-a-half, are we even capable of imagining a win over the Game Penises???

Yes. Diego Pavia is the Chosen One, Son of the Aggies, He Who is Turnt, the Flame That Melts Through the Freeze, Conqueror of the Tide, First of His Name. Tonight, he adds “Devourer of Chicken” to the list.

The Pick: South Carolina 27 - Vanderbilt 34

The SEC Upset Pick of the Week: I don’t really love any of these games to end in upsets, but as a current resident of Madison, Wisconsin, I think I have to go with the Badgers in an ugly one. Ooooon, Wisconsin!

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