Vandy Players Consider Opting Out Of Final Game At Georgia, Another Kicker Joining Team?

Over the last few days, message boards across the SEC had been littered with rumblings of Vanderbilt players opting out of the season finale Saturday at Georgia, but it was typical message board material without concrete evidence of a player revolt. This is the same team that allowed fill-in kicker, Sarah Fuller, to give a halftime speech to her teammates as they were being blown out by Missouri.

Now we have concrete evidence that there's been some sort of revolt going on inside the Commodore program after all, according to Tennessean reporter Adam Sparks. Sparks was able to get Vandy interim head coach Todd Fitch to go on record saying that he had "talked to a couple of guys" about opting out. Sparks wonders now if Vandy will even have 53 scholarship players making the trip to Athens.

Fitch, who has been put in a horrible position by the school's athletic department, says he'll have a roster update "later in the week." That sounds like the interim coach doesn't know how many guys will actually get on the plane to go get stomped by the Dawgs.

What's clear is that one girl -- Fuller -- will be going to Athens. Sparks reports that Fuller could be joined by Vandy's 2019 kicker, Ryley Guay, who is in the Vandy medical school and has a year of eligibility remaining. Guay would need approval from the NCAA and to go through COVID testing in order to join the team. As it stands today, Fuller is the team's kicker.

Kirby Smart was asked if he'll have a conversation with his team on how to handle Fuller if she's in harm's way on a kickoff. Publicly, it doesn't sound like the Georgia head coach plans to give the kicker any special attention.

“Probably not. I’ve never had to have that conversation before. I’m not going to change and have that conversation now,” Smart said on his virtual press conference. “We don’t account for the kicker in our returns. I don’t think anybody in the country accounts for the kicker. You assume that if you get to the kicker, you did a pretty good job in the return game. We don’t plan on having a conversation about it. She plays a very physical sport, to be honest with you. I’ve seen some pretty brutal collisions without a helmet and without gear on. I’m sure she can take care of herself when it comes to that. That’s not something we’ve really concerned with because we don’t assign anybody to the kicker."