MSU Red Cedar Message Board

Hollis is probably laughing his arse off....

The fan base went ape shit over tradition (of which I was one!) when the logo/font debacle happened and now we have people asking for white helmets? Hell, people here kept bitching when we would have a white stripe down the center one year and change it the next.

Maybe the athletic department is waiting to make any changes until they are certin the University has fully upgraded its e-mail and twitter servers to handle the

From @dgm591: What is Vanderbilt's ceiling as a program in next 5 years based on what they are doing now + your visit last week?

I'm not quite sure. If you'd asked me this three years ago, I'd have said they probably can hope to be a fringe Top 25 team and occasionally sneak into the Top 20, but maybe that's not their ceiling.

When I visited Vandy last weekend, I was startled at how much more impressive the facilities are now than a few years ago on my last trip. The Commodores new lockerroom rivals any I've seen around the country. The offices look like that of a top program. They're doing all of the window dressing to spruce up the facilities to make it look big-time too. They have a new indoor facility set for 2013. The stadium isn't huge, but Autzen, where Oregon plays only seats 54,000 and TCU's revamped home holds just 45,000 and both of those programs can compete for national championships. On top of that, Vandy is set in one of the best cities in the country, Nashville, which is a big selling point as is one of the most prestigious degrees in all of major college football.

One thing Vandy O-line coach Herb Hand pointed out to me when I was touring the place was how mindful they are of Stanford's rise. Remember, Stanford was 1-11 in 2006. The program went from there to 4-8, 5-7, 8-5 and then 12-1 to last year's 11-2. That shows it can be done at an elite academic institution playing major college football if you recruit the right people, develop talent and make shrewd coaching moves. Now, it should be noted that Stanford rose up in the Pac-12, whereas Vandy plays in the SEC, which is a much stronger conference at the top.

James Franklin has wasted little time proving he knows how to run a program. The Commodores went 6-7 and played in the Liberty Bowl in his first year after taking over a program that had gone 4-20 the previous two seasons. He also created a big buzz on the recruiting trail. He beat a bunch of SEC schools for scatback Brian Kimbrow, who pretty much everyone in the country had offered. They snagged blue-chip O-lineman Andrew Jelks away from Tennessee, which was surprising considering the kid's family were die-hard Vols fans. Those were big statements for Franklin in Year One. And now he not only has some momentum but kids have seen Vandy be competitive--they almost beat UGA, Arkansas and Florida in the Swamp. That whole vibe about 'same old Vandy' is more for fans and older people. To recruits, they barely have awareness of things more than five years ago. I doubt many top kids in the recruiting class of 2013 remember Alabama before Nick Saban.

This year's recruiting class is off to an even better start. QB Johnny McCrary is highly regarded so is California QB Chad Kanoff, as are a few of the receivers (Carlos Burse and Dominic Walker) committed who look like the kind of athletes Top 25 teams have. In Landon Stokes and Jonathan Wynn, they have a pair of athletic, rangy defensive ends that project to be forces in the SEC down the road.

We'll see how the recruits develop. Who knew outside of a few staffers in Palo Alto that David DeCastro would blossom into a star or that Coby Fleener would? Or Jonathan Martin? People knew Andrew Luck was talented, but could be that special? The other big key, as we've noted from Stanford's rise, is for this group to have the toughness and the cohesiveness to develop together. But there are some encouraging signs that this program can at least have the success Northwestern has had in the past decade, if not reach the level Stanford has. I know that sounds pretty far-fetched, but so did Stanford doing what it has done in the past five years. It's something of a long-shot at Vandy no doubt, given the heft of the SEC football factories, but there is hope.