PROLOGUE: The Near Thing
In the course of trying to determine whether Derek Mason is fit for purpose as head coach of Vanderbilt football, I posited that maybe he’s just not lucky. Maybe we just don’t have the knack of getting over in the close games, whereas maybe we did in the Brigadoon era. One play, one call, one moment that could turn things, and maybe we are just the schlemiel who has no manner of luck at all. And while I don’t have the wherewithal to pull all the data to see what the situation was in the last four minutes of games within one score, I did look all the way back to CBJ at our record in one-score games, regular season only, where “one score” is defined as a margin of victory of 8 points or fewer.