ClayNation Dixieland Delight College Football Tour: S. Carolina at Vandy

For most of my life, I hated Vanderbilt. I rooted against them in every sport with a fervent passion and went to bed at night smiling if they lost. Growing up in Nashville as a Tennessee fan, there was nothing more annoying than hearing about Vanderbilt's new coach and how the road to Commodore rebuilding was paved with promise. Time after time the cycle repeated itself: A bright-eyed coach spoke of winning, discipline, and execution and several years later, the same coach with bags under his eyes quietly sunk into the recesses of his profession after being fired. Vanderbilt was a football coach's cemetery -- the place where a promising career curled up and died. And with each failure, I found myself more and more pleased.

During this period, while my hate flourished, I was accompanied in my anti-Vanderbilt fervor by my dad. The two of us cheered when Vanderbilt missed a field goal that would have won the game, exchanged high fives when they fumbled on the goal line in the fourth quarter and celebrated with glee each defeat snagged from the jaws of victory by the hapless Commodores. Unless you have followed Vanderbilt closely for a couple of decades, you cannot imagine the variety of ways Vanderbilt has managed to lose football games. The litany of failures and inexplicable results legitimately boggles the mind. It's as if Job were placed on a football field. For 20 years of my life, failure after failure reigned forth upon the star-crossed Commodores, and neither my dad nor I could have been happier. And then my sister chose to go to undergrad at Vanderbilt.

My dad accepted the decision with great maturity. He insisted that my mom sign the tuition checks because he could not bear to sign them himself. Then, just as my dad gained a measure of peace about my sister's decision, he learned that I would be going to Vanderbilt Law School. Before I enrolled, I received a call from my dad while my mom was also on the line. After sundry talk, my mom spoke up: "Well, tell him, Norm." There was a pause and then my dad sheepishly said, "If you go to Vanderbilt Law School, I'd be proud." His words were so exacting I pictured him sitting at home reading language off a tablet that my mom had already dictated to him.

So I went to Vanderbilt Law School. Now it's 2006, and my dad has found himself surrounded by Vanderbilt graduates. He has a son who graduated from the law school, a son-in-law who graduated from the medical school, a daughter with both her undergrad and master's from the school and a daughter-in-law who will shortly graduate with a master's in education from Peabody.

It's possible my dad has more immediate family connections to more different schools within Vanderbilt University than anyone else living in Nashville. I believe this is the definition of irony. So somewhere along the way, the Travis family learned to stop hating Vanderbilt.

Stop No. 7 of the DDT arrived with Vanderbilt's homecoming game against South Carolina on the schedule and, at a little over a mile travel distance, this was by far the easiest game to reach. And it began at 10 in the morning when I walked up the steps of Kirkland Hall to meet Vanderbilt's chancellor, Gordon Gee. Yep, the actual chancellor.

1. Actually, it arguably began on the night before the meeting during a conversation about what to wear for my meeting. I promise my wife the following: I will not stay out late, I will dress decently and in no way embarrass her with my attire. Then, I stay out until almost 2 a.m. and decide upon a Vanderbilt Law T-shirt and jeans. For impression's sake, I drop my flip-flops and wear actual shoes.

2. I walk inside Kirkland Hall four hours before kickoff and almost stride directly into the chancellor's address to the Board of Trustees from South Carolina. As I stand awkwardly within eyesight of everyone, several people from Vanderbilt arrive and suggest that I might be more comfortable out of sight in the foyer. Then they offer me orange juice. This is a bit of an inauspicious start.

3. The South Carolina Board of Trustees leave but not before several people ask me if there are paper cups so they can carry their coffee out. Evidently everyone believes that I am the waiter. I pull out my notepad and jot down a few notes. "Do you take orders," asks one woman with silver hair.

4. The South Carolina people leave and suddenly Kirkland Hall on the center of Vanderbilt's campus is very quiet. I proceed into the chancellor's office, where I meet his staff and take a picture of the chancellor's Homecoming Day schedule. Since Vanderbilt began teaching students in 1875, there have been only seven chancellors. I wonder if my T-shirt decision was the wrong one.

The chancellor and Constance Gee with young Vanderbilt fans. (Photo/Clay Travis)

5. Almost exactly at 10, I meet chancellor Gordon Gee. I have met the chancellor several times before during law school. At no time did any of our conversations last longer than three sentences. Gee would show up at law school events and introduce himself to everyone as if they had no idea who he was. "I'm Gordon Gee," he would say, as if he had just walked in off the street. Then -- and this is even more where he would differ from most -- Gee would actually listen to your name in response.

6. Gee became president of his first university, West Virginia, at the age of 37. Since that time, he has been president of the University of Colorado, Ohio State, Brown and now Vanderbilt. He is 62 and appears much younger. Gee is also the only living person in America to have been head of five different universities. In contrast, I am the only living Vanderbilt law student to have received a D in First Amendment and gone on a pudding strike. So we make quite an august pair about to head across the Vanderbilt campus.

7. Shortly after our meeting, Gee's wife, Constance, arrives. Then we are off walking across campus to where the Homecoming Parade will be taking place. Vanderbilt's campus is the most easily walked of any I've visited. From the center of campus, it's possible to believe you are truly removed from downtown Nashville even though you are only 1.5 miles away. The sounds of the city completely fade away in the arboretum featuring each tree native to Tennessee.