Favorite team:Vanderbilt 
Location:Nashville
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Number of Posts:261
Registered on:6/2/2013
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Your model would introduce a new problem, who is top 10 vs top 25 vs some other ranking? Committee could move one team up just a bit, which means any team that beat that moved up team would get more points, and thus would be raised higher. Or, committee could move a team down a tier, impacting the ranking of another team who beat the demoted team. It’s all kind of circular.
Lol. Are we really suggesting that Vandy’s resume would be better by if we beat Texas/bama and loss to a Mizzou? What kind of reasoning is that?
Vanderbilt lost its two hardest games of the season, on the road to Texas and to Alabama, to end the season 10-2. Yet they won’t make the playoffs.

This implies that Vandy would have had to go 11-1 to make the CFP.

Does that make sense to you? A 10-2 sec team, with a heisman finalist qb, who only lost at Bama and at Texas, won’t make the playoffs? This may seem whiny, but com’on. The only reason we are in this position as compared to others is because we weren’t ranked, or even close to being ranked, in the preseason.

And it’s Vandy… our lovable loser for decades. If any team ever deserves some love, it’s this team.

As a Vandy fan, I ask that everyone start tweeting about us to make our case.

Two CFP scenarios to ponder

Posted by blackoutdore on 11/11/25 at 2:01 pm
Big Vandy fan here (yes, we exist). Would love to see the 'Dores in the CFP, and that only maybe happanes if we win out against UK and @Tenn. The 12th seed will go a G5 team, and it's possible that the ACC champ won't be in the Top 11 either, so Vandy would have to find it's way into the Top 10 to be a lock for the CFP.

Scenario 1:
Suppose Ole Miss lost to UF or Miss State in the next few weeks. Would Vandy jump them?

Vandy losses would be @Bama and @Texas. Ole Miss losses would be @uga and UF/@msu. @Bama and @uga losses are basically equivalent, both losing at Texas is much "better" loss than UF/@msu.

However, Ole Miss's victory @Oklahoma is much better than any of Vandy's Ws as things currently stand. If Mizzou knocked off OU in a few weeks, then it would:

1) Give Vandy a quality W against top 25 team (Mizzou)
2) Drop OU out of the CFP
3) Weaken Ole Miss's win over OU (only really matters if Ole Miss drops another game).

Scenario 2:
UGA loses to Texas. UGA would have losses at home against Bama and Texas, vs. Vandy's losses @Bama and @Texas. Same losses to the same teams, however Vandy's would both be on the road, and UGA's would both be at home.

UGA would have a quality W against Ole Miss as a diferentiator against Vandy though.

However, in that scenario, Texas would also need to lose to A&M, as a 10-2 Texas w/ losses @Ohio State and @UF would get in over a 10-2 Vandy w/ a head-to-head win.

I don't love the argument that a 9-3 Texas (whether their extra L comes from UGA or A&M) gets in over a 10-2 Vandy.

Vandy's academic faculty used to have considerable sway which limited athletic success. Things like mandating high test scores, limiting early enrollees, limiting spring transfers, and limiting few grad transfers (with a very drawn-out review process that most transfers would take another school's offer before seeing finalized) limited Vandy's ability to get in competitve talent. A lot of those restrictions have been severely reduced, which has made it easier for Vandy to get that talent.

I still think there's a way to go culture wise, but the new administration is very pro atheltics and a ton of money/time has been pouring into facilities and updating processes to make it easier for the football team. If we keep winning, the money will be there.

Will we be CFP competitive every year? Probably not, but I think we can start to see Vandy being bowl bound yearly, and then once every few years we get the right amount of talent to make a big push.

I would expect Clark Lea to stay at Vandy, and use his leverage to force Vandy to continue to upgrade facilties, coaching salaries, and proccesses that will make it better for the football team.
Having worked in the earning process for a publicly traded company, this would be great. I felt like 3-4 weeks of each quarter were wasted just working on earnings/board materials. It was a giant time suck for probably 30-40 people in my division, and my division of the company wasn’t even particularly important compared to the main division of the company which the company is known for.

Having that time back to do literally anything else would have allowed us to achieve more things.


Vandy players clearly gave up on the play after the whistle is blown. Hard to say how much space Harbor would have actually had if the whistle wasn’t blown. Easy first down, sure. TD? Not likely even with his elite speed.

Vandy is coming for y’all

Posted by blackoutdore on 5/17/25 at 12:28 am
‘Dores are hot. Be scared as y’all know the Vandy bball program is the best in the conference. Two NCs in the past 11 years and 2 runner ups ( and would have won in 2020 if not for Covid). We are inevitable.

re: Which car to pick?

Posted by blackoutdore on 5/2/25 at 11:27 pm to
Long term is an interesting choice of words for this situation, and possibly not the right goal.

For a Brand new driver, go with the safer option (the Volvo). If the Volvo has that many miles at 7 years old, it’s probably due to less wear and tear highway miles, so it may be in better shape than you think. Volvo should be able to make it to college age, and hopefully through college graduation
Camback
Vandy beating Alabama in football in 2024
Stephen F Austin beating Duke in Bball 2019
I should also mention that we fully max out our 401K and HSA.

My current plan is to use the check to pay off Student Loans #1 - #3, and car loan #1 and #2 ( car loan #2 has less than $3K on it remaining and is scheduled to be completely repaid this year anyhow). After that, I will use the remaining funds to fund 2024 and 2025 backdoor Roth.

That will leave about $24K left of the check to put towards whatever.
I will be recieving a large check in the next few weeks that will substantially improve my financial situation.

The question is, what to do with it - invest or pay off debt? The likely answer is a bit of both, but I'm trying to determine a cut off interest rate at which anything above that rate should be paid off, and the remainder of the check should go towards investments.

I can cover all debt payments via my normal cash flow, so this is really just an opportunity to acclerate paydown on some of these accounts.

Various Debt Interest Rates below - in order of interest rate (highest to lowest):

Student Loans #1 (federal) - 6.35%
Student Loans #2 (federal) - 5.75%
Student Loans #3 (federal) - 5.06%
Car Loan #1 - 4.99%
Car Loan #2 - 3.99%
Student Loans #4 (private) - 3.32%
Mortgage - 3.25%
I did biomedical engineering and have lots of thoughts on it (aka, I wish I had not done it).

I’d ask your kid to really think about why biomed and what they want their career to look like after they graduate with it. If it’s to go to med school, then there are a lot easier routes. Trust me when I say it sucks to realize that organic chem is your easiest course in a given semester, when for most people that is one the hardest courses they’ll take during all of college.

Biomed is also a jack of all trades engineering degree, but doesn’t go as deep into topics other engineers are more knowledgeable about. If they want to pivot to another engineering discipline, it will be challenging and require more coursework.

Jobs in the BME field often require graduate degrees, so be prepared to obtain a Masters if not a PhD before hitting the work force.

That being said, it is a fascinating field of study and they’ll learn a lot across a variety of topics.

re: Should we front run MSOS?

Posted by blackoutdore on 2/11/24 at 8:55 pm to
Conservatives win in the Fall. A anti-weed agenda gets developed as a reaction to undoing everything the dems have done. Weed is outlawed. Your bet goes to zero.

re: Taking a loan out of 401k

Posted by blackoutdore on 12/12/23 at 2:51 pm to
Yea the big risk is leaving the company (voluntarily or forced) prior to paying back the loan. This bit me in the but when I was younger and decided to leave the company after taking out a loan to pay off some CC debt. The 30 day pay back period was not something I could afford, so I took the tax hit and is something I regret now. But those were the days when I was young, broke, and made bad decisions.
I’ve used personal capital for the last several years, and used Mint before that. I’ve had minimal contact with Personal Capital’s reps. I find their interface very nice and intuitive, although it does suffer from some of the same account log out issues that Mint did.

It also does a bit more advice on investments and less on budget analysis. I would say for this stage in my life investments matter more than making sure I keep my entertainment budget at $500 for the month or whatever.
What makes those states 529s better than the others?
My family was in the dry cleaning business for ages. My great-grandfather started it, my grandfather continued it by opening his own plant in a different city, and my father worked there for a large portion of his life before doing something else.

My grandfather made good money several decades ago, and expanded into a higher-end men's clothing store as the margins were better there. He made some ill advised business decisions and shut down the clothing store and focused on the cleaning business. He worked there until he was 81, but it is what he knew and loved.

During my conversations with him, he always lamented the fact that business casual killed the dry cleaning business. People just don't wear clothing that needs dry cleaning as much as they used too. Part of that is due to more informal standards in the work place, and the other part is due to advances in clothing technology (i.e., Brooks Brothers has dress shirts that can be washed/dried and are non-wrinkle coming out of the dryer, there's no point in taking those clothing pieces to the cleaners). He retired before COVID, but I would assume work from home and tech's influence on an even more informal dress code has further reduced the demand for dry cleaners. Plus, I'm sure there have been even more advancements in clothing technology.

If one were to do open/purchase a dry cleaning business, I think you have to adopt a hub/spoke model. The spokes are small store fronts that collect items that need dry cleaning, and hold cleaned items. The hub would be your actual plant, and would be placed in a cost-efficient location (no need to locate the plant in expensive, middle of city locations since they are not customer facing). I'd be interested in a cost/benefit analysis of going entirely spokelesss, and using pick-up/delivery vehicles to transport clothes to/from the plant. You could develop a simple app to schedule pick-ups and deliveries.



Side note about my gradfather since it has been right at a year since his passing and I'm reminiscing... He lived another 11 years until age 92. He was exceptionally active and sharp for a person that age, which I attribute to him standing at the counter 12 hours a day for most of his life, retrieving clothes, and taking them out to customers cars. Even during his final year of life, he was "diving" (it was more of a belly flop) into the water at the family vacation home he bought when he was making good money. By chance, I went home the week before he died for an engagement party and visited with him, and he was just as sharp as ever and no one would have expected he would be dead one week later. I even facetimed him the day he died (we knew it was the end) when he was in the hospital, and he was still very much with it up until the end. Literally, on his death bed, he asked me for advice.
How does one give advice to a dying man?!?! As the palliative drugs were administered, he quipped to the family members in the room "Ok, meeting is over". I miss him dearly.


We are going to have the leagues best defense. It will actually be impossible to score, because there are no end zones.

We’re changing the game!

re: Physical cash on hand

Posted by blackoutdore on 7/2/23 at 7:45 am to
Why in the world would you need $50k sitting in a safe? It’s way more than what you need for most common emergencies, and not nearly enough for unique emergencies (need to disappear for “business” reasons, ransom money, etc.”)

I keep about $1k at home. That’s usually more than enough and helpful to have when I don’t have a few bills to tip the delivery people.