When Vanderbilt University rewrote college football history early this month, soundly defeating the No.1 ranked Alabama Crimson Tide watched by a 28,934-person capacity crowd at the First Bank campus football stadium, the post-game victory celebration spread to the end of Broadway to the banks of the Cumberland River where a small jubilant growing crowd left the winning game Goal Post.
Amid the celebratory jubilation at the moment, little thought had apparently been given to getting the goal post out of the water, whether polluting the river would be an issue or whether people on the riverbanks were injured or property damaged.
Few thought at the moment, who would pay the Nashville Fire Department the costs of fire and police for responding to the incident. Who was going to pay Martin’s Wrecker Service on Hermitage Avenue for the rugged work their crew performed, including the costs and labor provided for moving the goal post remains back to Vanderbilt’s campus from downtown on the riverbank. Nearly a thousand pounds of goal post parts had to be moved.
The city and many who could speak directly to the issue—moving a multi-pieced structure sanctioned by the NCAA and SEC and like groups–which briefly made national news, had little to say, beyond noting the celebration was not their doing or legal responsibility.
The Nashville Convention and Visitors Corp., the downtown tourism and visitors promotions agency which is the go-to source for upbeat news about downtown, was quiet as a mouse about the post-game activities. No arrests were made by police, who maintain a police substation to quell potential rowdiness and disorderly conduct. Even when pedestrian or vehicle traffic or congestion on the area’s party buses –from the Honky Tonk Party Bus to Hell on Wheels to the Rowdy Bus–that consume the area get out of hand, the police are there.
As far as police records show, it was a normal, quiet weekend in the Lower Broadway area. No one was issued citations of any kind or given court dates to explain why a prized Vanderbilt Goal Post was removed from the campus, carried three miles East into the heart of downtown and laid on the riverbanks as it broke apart.
The Vanderbilt Commodores football press office acknowledged the goal post incident in part and asserted there was no truth to rumors the goal post parts had been bought by the Southeastern Conference (SEC), the football league of major colleges with big intercollegiate programs in the South. The university sold the goal post parts in a weeklong auction, the university sports office said.
No other national regulating boards with oversight for distinguished institutions of the South got involved in the funny, yet embarrassing, incident.
“We don’t investigate everything that happens at an institution,” said one official at a regulatory agency. “It has to be directly related to an accreditation standard,” the official said, “We don’t have a standard related to overzealous and probably drunk students who tear down a goal post.”
Vanderbilt football declined to disclose how many offers were made for the goal post parts or identify who the lucky winner(s) of the goal post parts might be. Moving those parts could pose a challenge, noted Sam Broughton, a sales representative for Farwell, Michigan based Rogers Athletics, which sells an assortment of football gear and field goals.
Goals come it roughly four to six parts before assembly, he said, as some parts can be 30 feet long, 20 feet upright and 10 feet above the ground.
The Vanderbilt football official said the institution has back ups in reserve to take the place of the goal post that went astray on the river front.
“We have replacement posts in the facility, those have already been put up,” said the Vanderbilt football spokesperson, seeking to assure readers and fans that goal posts will return for another fierce battle. “I’m not sure they are made the same as the ones” taken to the river, the spokesperson said.
