I have 3 favorite college football teams. Sue me.

I like them all. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I have three favorite college football teams. Sue me.

My daddy raised me to hate the Vols. He hated the Vols. His daddy hated the Vols. It's a family tradition to hate the Vols. So, I hate the Vols.

When I was a small child, my family had Vanderbilt football season tickets. My first football experiences were at Vanderbilt Stadium, sitting behind the goalpost in Section J. So, Vanderbilt has always been first in my heart. And, of course, being a Nashvillian by birth doesn't hurt either. Vanderbilt is our team. The university and its athletics team has always done a superb job of representing our city, and as a Nashville fan, I'm forever a Vandy fan. First and foremost. Even through all the crappy times.

I also grew up an Alabama fan. Part of that was natural in the Vol-hating, but part of it was, again, because of my dad. There's a photo of me at 9 months old, sitting on my dad's lap. He's wearing an Alabama Crimson Tide t-shirt. My dad was always an admirer of Bear Bryant, and whenever Alabama was on TV, we were watching Alabama (if we weren't at the Vandy game, of course). In my mid-twenties, I actually moved to Alabama and lived there for four and a half years (from 2005-2010) and worked in sports radio. The station I programmed (WUMP - Huntsville) is the Crimson Tide affiliate for North Alabama. So, I covered the team on a weekly basis. It also didn't hurt that the Alabama woman I met and fell in love with (and eventually married) is a huge Alabama fan, as is most of her entire family. So, while my love for Alabama began out of a hatred for the Vols, it's eventually grown into a true love for Alabama. As a matter of fact, I really don't hate the Vols anymore. I still don't like them. I still don't want them to win. But now, like a true Alabama fan, I despise Auburn. Tennessee is just a fly in the ointment.

Then, there's my beloved Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders. MTSU is my alma mater. They probably should be my favorite college football team, but let's be honest... they're in the Sun Belt Conference. It's just not the same. I hope they do well, but I don't keep up with them the way I keep up with SEC football. I'll go to a couple of MTSU games this fall, but it's really more of an excuse to go back to campus. I love MTSU with all my heart. I spent two amazing years there, after transferring in from a community college at my junior year. But it's definitely more of a love for the university than it's football team.

The problem with having 3 favorite teams who are this close in proximity (and two of which are in the same conference) is that every now and then, they play each other...and that is painful. Vanderbilt faces Alabama on October 8. I don't yet know who I will root for. Either way, I'll be happy and I'll be sad. I love them both. When Vandy and MTSU played three times between 2001 and 2005, I pulled for Vandy every time...even as I was a student at MTSU. MTSU won all three games. That sucked. But it was great.

So, don't call me a fake fan. Don't think I'm less of a fan than you because I chose to divide my allegiances three ways. That's the way I choose to enjoy college football season. It's been that way for years, and it will continue to be that way. I love all three of those schools and I want them all to do well.  And I really don't care what you think about it.

Optimistic New Vanderbilt Coach, Version 9.0

I just heard new Vanderbilt Football Head Coach James Franklin on WGFX's 3 Hour Lunch.

He's done very well with recruiting since coming on board, and just like every other first-year Vandy coach, he's quite optimistic. He certainly is the most charismatic Vandy coach I've heard in a long time (if ever), but then again, the season hasn't started yet. I'd like to see how he'll handle the media once the inevitable losing begins.

As a lifelong Vanderbilt fan, I can only hope that the recent success of the baseball and basketball programs will eventually bleed over into the football program as well, but as ultra-competitive as the SEC is, I just don't see it happening.

But stay optimistic, coach. Maybe the good attitude will rub off on the players and they can sneak up and beat an SEC opponent or two not named Ole Miss.
 

To All Who Come To This Happy Place: Welcome.

To all who come to this happy place: Welcome.

Okay, that was what Walt Disney said when he introduced Disneyland to the world in 1955. So, I totally ripped that off. But, the sentiment behind it is the same. Welcome to Big Picture Sports.

I’m not going to break down contracts. I’m not going to analyze stats. I’m calling this Big Picture Sports, because I want to take a look at, well, the big picture. The great thing about blogs is that the infinite amount of space provided allows us to get really deep into the details. That’s great and all, but that’s not where I’m going to go (most of the time). I might decide to focus on some minutiae every now and then, but that's not my true intent. I’m going to zoom out the lens a bit and look at things from the broad perspective of a casual fan. I’ll cover things happening in the world of sports, both on and off the field/court/ice. A lot of what will be posted here will be Nashville-centric and Southern-centric, but there might be some other opinions about general sports topics or national stories.

I can't guarantee you a post every day. I'll write as the mood (or a particular opinion) strikes me. And I'll promise that after this initial post, I'll focus more on sports and less on myself. I hope you enjoy it.

Now, the rest of this post is all about me. I’m not asking you to read it, but if you want to understand my mindset, this would be a good place to start…

My name is Zack Bennett. I am Nashville-born, Wilson County-raised. I grew up bouncing around from team to team among the four major sports, really riding the bandwagons and not rooting myself with a deep love for any particular team, until the Titans and Predators came along.

I watched the first Predators game through a snowy picture on a clearance TV hooked up to a coathanger in the electronics section of the now-closed Hermitage Kmart, which is where I was working in 1998. That game, against the Florida Panthers, was broadcast on WNAB-TV 58, and our TVs only picked up Channel 5. So, I had to find a way to make sure I witnessed history. I’ll never forget it. I had always been curious about hockey, and my knowledge of it was fairly limited to what I learned playing NHL ’94 for the Sega Genesis. But I remember being SO excited that we had a team to call our own.

My first Predators game came against the San Jose Sharks. I was still in high school, and my mother wouldn’t allow me to go by myself or with friends, so I bought her and me a ticket. We sat in section 316. I don’t remember if the Preds won or lost, but I do remember how fascinated I was, and how my mother had no clue. My second game was part of a Lipscomb University recruiting excursion, and it was the Preds’ first shutout: a game against the Phoenix Coyotes, when Tomas Vokoun permanently stole the spotlight from Mike Dunham.

During the 2002-03 season, at MTSU, I began a friendship with Brendan Stubblefield (@vols7381 on twitter), and thanks to a combination of $10 Upper Goal Zone seats, and $8 tickets on Thursday via a weekly coupon in The Tennessean, the two of us went to as many games as we could afford. It was then that I fell in love with hockey and the Preds. I bought single-game seats to almost every game in the 2003-04 season, most of which were in the famed “Cell Block 303”. The lockout and a subsequent move to Alabama for nearly 5 years forced me somewhat out of the loop, so I wasn’t here for all the turmoil surrounding the Jim Balsillie and Boots Del Biaggio affairs.

But once I moved back to Nashville in 2010, and began making new hockey friends on Twitter and reading the various blogs, I was hooked again. Now, in 2011-12, I will be a season ticket holder for the first time, and I can’t wait.

My relationship with the Titans is a little different. Right out of high school, I began working for WANT 98.9 FM in Lebanon, a Titans Radio affiliate. Quickly, I volunteered to man the control room during all the games. I was literally getting paid to watch football. The first game I attended was, of all things, the Music City Miracle game. After the Super Bowl loss, I applied for (and received) an internship with Titans Radio, where I wrote for TitansRadio.com, and produced audio packages for the broadcast each week. Imagine me, at 20 years old, getting practically unlimited access to one of the NFL’s elite teams. The whole experience was surreal. For the 2000 season, I was manning the controls on the flagship station, WGFX 104.5, and in 2001, I was manning master control for the entire network. Then, it all came to an end. My contract was revoked for reasons I still don’t fully know, though admittedly, it was probably because I was being an ass. But, I managed to stay on board at 104.5 as it became “The Zone”. After a year of working with guys like Willy Daunic and George Plaster, I was fired again, so I went to work over at Cumulus, which then hosted 106.7 The Fan. So, there, I got to work, albeit briefly, with Blake Fulton, Joe Biddle, and Pete Weber. Interestingly, me and Kevin Ingram were the only two people to work with both sides of that faction after its very public breakup in 2003.

After moving to Alabama to manage and program a Sports Talk radio station (WUMP-Huntsville), I worked with the station’s afternoon host, Thom Abraham. Yes, the same Thom Abraham who would later come to Nashville. During my time there, I requested a media credential (and received it) for the Titans from 2007-2009, so I went to almost every home game during that span as a member of the media.

As far as college sports goes, I’ve always been a fan of the Vanderbilt Commodores, first and foremost. It’s been a pretty crappy fandom. But, I live by this simple rule: everybody needs a winner in their life. So, I have created a new rule: If you claim to be a lifelong fan of the Vanderbilt Commodores, you get one other team to be a fan of… but you always have to root for Vandy first. So, I adopted Alabama as my secondary team of choice when I was 11 years old. That alliance came in very handy when I was running WUMP – Huntsville’s Crimson Tide radio affiliate.

So, there you have it. I really can’t believe you read all of that, but thanks.

NOTE: The blog's title changed to "Picks, Pucks & Pigskin" roughly 24 hours after the site's launch.