Vanderbilt Remembering as It Wins

Vanderbilt Coach Bobby Johnson understands enough about life and knows enough about Vanderbilt history that he didn’t want to let his players equate Saturday’s game against Mississippi with their feelings for Kwane Doster, the running back who was killed in a shooting in his hometown of Tampa, Fla., over the Christmas holidays last year.

“This will not be a ‘win one for Kwane’ thing. We are honoring his life and his contribution to Vanderbilt,” Johnson said as the Commodores prepared for the game against Mississippi on Saturday, when they held a halftime tribute for Doster, who would have been their starting tailback.

When you coach a team that has won two games each of the last four seasons and hasn’t had a winning season in 22 years, you don’t want your players to feel they failed their dead teammate just because they couldn’t win.

And then ... Vanderbilt won.

For the third time in three games.

First Wake Forest, then Arkansas.

And now, after a 31-23 victory over former USC assistant Ed Orgeron’s Ole Miss team, the Commodores are 3-0 for the first time since 1984 and 2-0 in the Southeastern Conference for the first time since 1956.

Doster, who was the 2002 SEC freshman of the year and on track to graduate in May, was shot to death by a man in another car Dec. 26 after the friends he was riding with got into a dispute.

He is never far from his teammates’ minds.

His locker, with his No. 1 jersey, has been sealed and the players take a poster of him everywhere they go.

“It is in the locker room before we go out to practice. It was with us in Arkansas,” linebacker Herdley Harrison told reporters last week.

“At the end of the game, we’re holding up 1s and thinking about Kwane. When we take that sign, it is like he is with us on the field.”

If they can, they would like to take his No. 1 jersey somewhere Vanderbilt hasn’t been since 1982. To a bowl game.

With three victories, Vanderbilt is halfway to bowl-eligibility, with Richmond and Middle Tennessee next.

But the wins shouldn’t be for Doster, because then the losses would mean more than they should too.

It’s enough for him to be along for one final season.

“We consider him on the roster,” Harrison said. “He’s definitely a part of our team.”

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Wake Up the ... Well, Hold On

Notre Dame still looks like a pretty good team despite its 44-41 overtime loss to Michigan State, and Charlie Weis might well be the coach the Irish need.

But it’s probably worth remembering that in Tyrone Willingham’s first season in 2002, the Irish started 8-0, beat Florida State in Tallahassee and inspired a “Return to Glory” T-shirt fad before fading down the stretch and getting thumped by USC and North Carolina State in their last two games.

Notre Dame went 5-7 the next season, 6-6 last season and now Willingham is coach at Washington.

Time will tell whether Weis is indeed the right coach -- and if he is, there are probably a lot of “Return to Glory” T-shirts stuffed in bottom drawers, ready and waiting.

Besides, Weis won’t have to be Knute Rockne to inspire the Irish against Michigan State next season.

All he will have to do is show the tape of Spartan players staking a huge Michigan State flag into the grass at Notre Dame Stadium.

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Still the Same

Willingham is a hardly a bad fellow, but he is ever the stoic -- and never one to be led anywhere he doesn’t want to go.

He won for the first time as Washington’s coach Saturday with a 34-6 victory over Idaho that broke the Huskies’ eight-game losing streak -- potentially avoiding a very nasty streak, with Notre Dame, UCLA, Oregon, USC and Arizona State ahead.

“I have no thoughts personally, just for our team,” Willingham said.

Expect him to get more tight-lipped this week, with the Irish on their way to Seattle.

“At the end of the day, the scoreboard will say, ‘Washington and Notre Dame,’ not ‘Ty and Charlie,’ ” Willingham said. “It means we have a chance to be 2-2.”

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Most Valuable Office Assistant?

It’s not Steve Spurrier and his famous can’t-spell-Citrus-Bowl-without-the-UT quip, but new Florida Coach Urban Meyer’s hiring of C.J. Leak in the football office might have fueled the Tennessee rivalry a bit.

Leak is the brother of Gator quarterback Chris Leak -- and a former Tennessee quarterback.

“C.J. I’m sure knows a lot about our offense and our signals and our system and how we go about things,” Tennessee Coach Phillip Fulmer told reporters this week, intimating he’d use deception or decoys to signal in the plays.

Meyer downplayed the connection.

“The reason he’s here is because he’s a high-character, high-quality person, and I kind of like those guys in the coaching profession,” Meyer said. “How much are we draining him for information about Tennessee? We’re asking him about the personnel. He’s helped us by telling us, but a lot of that is overrated too.”

After Florida’s 16-7 victory, Tennessee coaches and fans might be debating that for the next year.

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Playing on Saturday

The seeming step backward from the NFL to college isn’t necessarily easy.

Former Miami Dolphin coach Dave Wannstedt is 0-3 at Pittsburgh after a 7-6 loss to ex-Raider coach Bill Callahan’s Nebraska team in a game that wasn’t so pretty for the 3-0 Cornhuskers.

At South Carolina, Spurrier is 1-2 since returning to the SEC after a brief stay with the Washington Redskins.

In 12 years at Florida, Spurrier’s teams lost more than two SEC games only once.

After a 37-14 loss to Alabama on the heels of a close loss to Georgia, the Gamecocks are 0-2 in the SEC.

“I’m frustrated but not shocked,” Spurrier said. “All you got to do is look at the stats. They could have beat us 50 to nothing.”

If there are reasons NFL coaches sometimes struggle when they go back to school, it might be that complex systems such as the West Coast offense or what Spurrier is calling the “Cock ‘n’ Fire” at South Carolina take time for players to learn -- and that a dearth of talent is often one reason the job was open in the first place.

Other former NFL head coaches in college this season are Kentucky’s Rich Brooks, Virginia’s Al Groh, Georgia Tech’s Chan Gailey, Hawaii’s June Jones, Oregon State’s Mike Riley, Army’s Bobby Ross and, of course, USC’s Pete Carroll.

Seems like he has done OK.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

... Losers Now Winners

Vanderbilt (3-0) has won more than three games once over the last 10 seasons. A look at its record, and points scored and points allowed:

*--* Year Rec. PS PA * 1995 2-9 122 281 * 1996 2-9 122 234 * 1997 3-8 138 204 * 1998 2-9 142 369 * 1999 5-6 252 256 * 2000 3-8 193 278 * 2001 2-9 226 402 * 2002 2-10 221 368 * 2003 2-10 235 358 * 2004 2-9 212 286

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