Vanderbilt football schedule sees Mississippi flip-flop: It'll be Bulldogs before Rebels

Vanderbilt announced today that it's flip-flopping Ole Miss and Miss State on its schedule.

So instead of following up a road trip to Baton Rouge with a Sept. 19 home date with Ole Miss, which almost surely will be ranked in the preseason Top 10, the Commodores will face Miss State. Of course, facing the maroon dogs is never a walk in the park, as we proved last year, but I'd much rather follow a tough road game against LSU with a game against the lesser of the two teams from the Magnolia state. And I'd rather face a Dan Mullen-coached offense sooner rather than later in the season. The Bulldogs do have lots of talent, but it should take Mullen a while to get his team rolling. Aren't we glad we faced Ole Miss, with new coach Houston Nutt, early rather than late last season?

And we'll get the Bulldogs the week after they play at Auburn.

The Ole Miss game, still in Nashville, is now slated for Oct. 3. We'll be coming off a trip to Houston to face Rice, and we'll travel to Army the following week.

We'll face the Rebels nine days after they play South Carolina on the road in a Thursday night ESPN game — and moving that game to Thursday is what caused the Mississippi flip-flop in the first place. (We all bow down to ESPN.)

Speaking of ESPN games, we don't have any on the schedule so far, though most of the Army games are picked up by the ESPN family — expect our Oct. 10 game with Army to land on ESPNU.

Click here for the revised 2009 Vanderbilt football schedule.

Click here for the best and most quickly updated college football TV schedule I've found on the Web.