Talk:1921 Vanderbilt Commodores football team

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Overlengthy quotation removed; I'm not sure what this was supposed ot achieve but I've removed it.

In a noted speech just before the teams took the field, referring to this grave, McGugin tapped his fingers on the floor and told his boys:<ref name="50Years"/><ref name="Pope"/>

You are about to be put to an ordeal which will show the stuff that's in you! What a glorious chance you have! Every one of you is going to fix his status for all time in the minds and hearts of his teammates today. How you fight is what you will be remembered by. If any shirk, the Lord pity him. He will be degraded in the hearts of the rest as long as they live.

Man is a curious kind of a "critter." You will all doubtless eat and have comforts and "butt around" for a good many days, but during the next hour you must forget yourselves absolutely. You are to hurl yourselves like demons with the fury of hell on the crowd that has come here to humiliate us. The man worth while is the man who can rise away above and beyond in the face of a great task. You must transcend yourselves.

I am glad Mr. Curry is here. Some of you knew Rabbit. We felt toward him all the tenderness a mother feels toward her own little boy. He had a little slender body; he weighed only 128 pounds, but he had a heart as big as that loving cup over there on the mantel. He was modest; his life was absolutely clean; and what a fighter he was. His life was a great contribution to Vanderbilt—particularly to our athletic traditions. The influence of his spirit will always abide. He always wanted to play with Vanderbilt against Texas. His body is resting only a few miles south of here; but his spirit is hovering above us now. Some of these days i want to see his likeness looking down on your athletic fields. I am glad his father is here so that he can see face to face, how we regard his son.

There is one thing that makes me sick at heart. I heard repeatedly before we left Nashville that this Vanderbilt team, this crowd of men into whose faces I now look, might win from Texas if it would only fight. Has anybody the right to imply such an insult? And, if so, when before now could such a thing be said of men from Tennessee? How about Pickett's men who moved out of the wood and exposed their breasts and faces to be shattered and torn as they moved up that slope? And how about the Tennesseans of the Thirtieth Division, who broke the Hindenburg Line--a task even greater because it was accompanied by so much mud and misery. All but a few here are Tennesseans and the rest have elected to be educated here. You are a part of us and you must uphold the traditions of Vanderbilt and Tennessee.

Who the devil started all of this bunk about the Texas team? Who thinks they are unbeatable? They say that they have the greatest team in their history and, perhaps this is true. They say Vanderbilt never had a team which could defeat theirs of this year, and that is not true. Texas has no shield like ours. We have some scars on it, but there are a lot of stars there, too. Texas has no such athletic tradition and history.

They say the climate is against us. That is not true. The change should do us good. This light, pure air will help us.

Texas is overconfident. They say it will be a Texas landslide. If you will put every ounce of strength you have into the first fifteen minutes, they will ask themselves: 'What liars deceived us this way?'

Everything is in our favor.{{refn|group="n"|McGugin went on: "You have seen what the papers have been saying . . .They are betting Texas will beat you 20 to 0, they say you are a bunch of cowards. "Rabbit" Curry, whose father is sitting here with you, is looking down on you from his Eternal Home.<ref name="Cason"/>... that you are only a shell of the old Vanderbilt teams. You don't deserve anything better unless you give the back of your hand to such an insult.

Now is there any man here who will not fight every inch of the way?

Will any man here disgrace himself and live in the contempt of his teammates the rest of his days?

Are you going to establish yourselves in your own self-respect and in the eyes of thousands who are watching you?

Are you going to make your own records and leave memories

for others to live by?"

|}} Baffle gab1978 (talk) 04:10, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

It's long and unwieldy, but it is his most famous speech. So, I am torn on how to handle it. Cake (talk) 02:30, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

Starting lineups for games

I don't think the starting lineup for each game is crucial, no? At least not in the prose. It'd trim quite a bit if you took them out. Lizard (talk) 17:38, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

It's pretty standard to keep them in there such as in the Michigan team articles for a variety of reasons. Take a look at the 1928 UF team and consider how lost you'd be given how many backfield stars played. The Phantom Four wasn't even the first string. Cake (talk) 01:32, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

"all games in the series featuring shutouts"

It took me a few reads for this, but I'm guessing it means that each game up until this point was a shutout. Which would have to be true if the all-time series score was 184–4 and Georgia's only win was 4–0, no? Lizard (talk) 23:01, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

That's right. It just speaks to the one-sidedness of the rivalry then. Cake (talk) 13:07, 14 March 2016 (UTC)