A Vanderbilt blog should be about winning and losing — especially losing

Sure, outside it's cold and dark and wet and nobody wants to do anything. Especially post blogs about a crappy team.

So it's no huge surprise that most Vanderbilt fan blogs are in silent funks.

Most Vanderbilt fans in cyberspace act genuinely shocked and angry when the Commodores lose. This fall, the Tennessean's comment board featured some hilarious posts from so-called longtime Vanderbilt football fans who were giving up on the team after the Duke loss. Giving up in November while we still have a winning record? What, were you in a coma during the Watson Brown years?

If you're a Vanderbilt fan so you can go online and gloat to Tennessee fans, then you're pulling for the wrong school.

Tennessee should always have a better record than us in football. Kentucky should always have a better record than us in basketball. Yeah, it's great when that doesn't happen and certainly Vanderbilt fans can and should have a little fun. But then those schools are going to fire their coaches and summon a fleet of Brinks trucks and we're not going to be beating them anymore.

We are losers. Spectacular losers. We've made losing an art form, at least in football.

Humorist Roy Blount Jr. has said that attending Vanderbilt cured him of following college football.

I understand completely. In August, I decided to start this blog and follow the football team as something of an intellectual exercise. The blog would be called Moral Victory! and it would chronicle losing, and learning to be a loser, and learning to recognize little victories when you're getting your butt handed to you.

So what happened? The Commodores had a winning season and won their first bowl since 1955. But along the way, they drove their fans to over-confidence, then fear and trembling and impending doom, and then tears of relief.

Now the football team is having its best recruiting year perhaps ever, but is still ranked last in the SEC in recruiting and No. 66 in the nation.

Oh yeah, and right now the basketball team — traditionally scrappy and competitive, at least when playing in its weird and charming old gym — is really, really bad.

Which means that unlike other Vandy blogs, Moral Victory! is not in a silent funk.