SEC EXTRA: Those lovable losers

A hard worker who has experienced rare nanoseconds of athletic success but believes effort eventually will lead to stardom.

And, of course, he'd be a kicker.

There's also little doubt about where he'd play.

A place where -- on the football field, at least -- supreme effort often isn't enough because of opponents' superior talent. A place where winning happens as often as the Great Pumpkin appears, where no matter how much love or work you put into that scraggly Christmas tree, it's still just a scraggly tree.

A place that makes you go, "Aaugh!"

That's Vanderbilt.

Nowhere else in the Southeastern Conference is there a better fit for a lovable loser such as Charlie Brown, who keeps attempting field goals even though he knows his holder will yank away the ball at the last second.

Except this season, Lucy actually might let him kick the ball.

Vanderbilt is 4-4 and can, by recording two victories in its next three games (against Florida on Saturday, Kentucky and Tennessee), become a lovable winner for the first time since 1982.

Since then, the Commodores have won three or fewer games in a season 15 times. They also never have finished higher than fifth place in the SEC Eastern Division (which was born in 1992) and have made just three bowl games since 1955.

"A lot of people didn't expect [winning] out of Vandy," Florida junior defensive tackle Steven Harris said. "Somebody's going to wake up and say we can't keep losing, we've got to win, and they're going to start winning."

But if anything has been consistent at Vanderbilt, it's losing. That, New York sports psychologist Richard Lustberg said, affects a team's confidence and attitude. After losing for so often, it believes that's the status quo. It takes root in the subconscious of players and coaches, and they unwittingly can become part of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"When [new] players come onto the team, they're indoctrinated," said Lustberg, who works with professionals and amateurs, including high schoolers and younger athletes. "A lot of people believe they can make a difference and still have hope. Freshmen and sophomores believe that secretly during their tenure they'll make the team better. They soon find out that's not going to be the case."

But for a while, it looked as if change was quickly coming at Vanderbilt. The Commodores started the season with four consecutive victories, earning them national press and making them the darlings of Nashville.

It didn't seem right to some.. The Commodores are supposed to be the SEC's doormat. They're not supposed to make plays in the fourth quarter to win games, and they're certainly not supposed to have road victories at Wake Forest and Arkansas.

Yet they did, and people were correct to feel strange about it, Lustberg said.

"It puts your emotional world in tilt," he said. "Predictable becomes unpredictable, which is really the way the world is. That's why anything that shows any kind of consistency is embraced.

"I think there's something to be said about uncomfortable situations that are stable. They [fans] know the outcome of the game. It can be uncomfortable when you don't know which way a game can go. It goes back and forth, and you get uneasy. When you're watching a lovable loser, you don't have to worry."

Generally, people are uncomfortable with change, Lustberg said, so there's something to be said for knowing Vanderbilt probably will lose each week.

"[It compares to being] unhappy, but at least you're unhappy every day," Lustberg said. "You know exactly what you're going to feel like every day.

"People will often choose stability over change. Change is very frightening and unstabilizing."

That doesn't mean Vanderbilt chose to lose its next four games after that 4-0 start, but people -- including fans and players -- probably weren't that surprised when the Commodores did. Vanderbilt hasn't been a football power since the 1920s, doesn't aspire to be and isn't taking any steps to become one.

"Vanderbilt has never really stated that they're anything but what they are," Lustberg said. "I don't get the impression they're going to pump in that kind of money, that kind of school funds, or get that kind of head coach like Charlie Weis, say, to do that.

"So you're basically getting what they promised. In the mission statement of the team, it's kind of implied that, 'This isn't going to happen, fellas.' Nobody's

misled. It's expected that Notre Dame is going to win. It's a whole different ballgame. They're not going to stand for [losing]. They [the Commodores] announced straight up front that we're really going to have a football team, and whatever we do, we do, and whatever we don't, we don't."

That means occasional bits of success but nothing sustained.

"We've probably been in some games we probably could've won if we had a little bit more confidence," Vanderbilt coach Bobby Johnson said. "We were encouraged, obviously, by the start.

"That win [over Arkansas on Sept.10] gives you a little confidence, but if you're just going on confidence, this isn't the league that you're going to have a lot of success in. One win over those kind of teams isn't going to be the last thing you have to do. You have to keep it up all the time."

Without having Lucy pull away the ball.