Vanderbilt out of SEC?

We have one of the better sports programs in the country (even if you consider our Football program) and are one of the best research facilities in the world. Never a chance in hell that our school’s decision to maintian a secular support structure for organizations is going to affect its membership to the SEC. If the other schools even thought to do that, there would be a shit storm from the entire country. While I may not be fully on board with denying funding to any religious based club on campus, the university’s decision to not show a bias of one religion over another is what you would expect when a school attracts students from a global position.

Vandy has no reason to leave the SEC – too financially lucrative, and cutting them out would leave a negligible fiscal effect to the remaining schools.

The SEC needs Vandy’s academic prestige and strength in the Olympic sports. They wouldn’t take WVU for academic reasons, but added Mizzou partially due to their AAU status. Cutting Vandy would put the league in the same boat they would have been in with WVU and not Missouri from an academic standpoint.

…2010-11 Men’s Basketball – winner of 23 games, and 4th appearance in last 5 years in NCAA’s
…2011-12 Men’s Basketball – preseason top 10 pick
…2011 Baseball – SEC Co-Champs and appearance in College World Series
…2012 Baseball – Number one incoming recruiting class in the nation
…2010-11 Women’s Basketball – winner of 20 games, and 12th consecutive appearance in the NCAA’s
…2011 Women’s Cross Country SEC Champs
…2011 Football – new coach, improving team, strong recruiting class for 2012
…Perennially strong programs in golf, tennis, women’s bowling & soccer

Not bad athletic accomplishments for the past calendar year, especially considering how poor the overall athletic program was at Vanderbilt back when there was actually someone sitting in the athletic department, every day, with a title of athletic director.

Vanderbilt is not leaving the SEC today, tomorrow, nor will they ever be asked to leave the SEC. It is a total non-issue that people that have no clue like to throw out there.

I kind of doubt that the heads of the other universities would care about this issue, let alone enough to ask Vandy to leave. We are in the Bible belt, but those in academia and ones with the high level positions at issue doubtfully care that much.

I also think it is silly because that would put us back down to 13 with Missouri coming and the SEC would have to find another team.

…given that the SEC seems to become ever more football-centric. We’re a contender in pretty much every other sport, but inasmuch as the conference is focused on football to the exclusion of everything else, we will suffer by comparison. For now. I think stringing a couple of winning seasons together – assuming CJF doesn’t pull a Steve Sloan on us – will quickly put paid to that, especially if LOL Miss and Kentucky continue to swoon.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but from an academic standpoint, the SEC can’t afford to lose Vandy. Without us, they’re essentially the Big 12. Would we be a better fit for the Big 10 or ACC in that respect? Absolutely, but more than ever before, I think there’s a sense that we CAN do it all – Ivy League academics and Top 25 sports – and I don’t think anyone’s clamoring to go.

(This is where I mention the Magnolia League again, when Alexander Heard was exploring the idea of forming a conference to continue playing big-time football while maintaining high academic standards and avoiding going down the road of state-school-type football excess. In the 1950s. Didn’t work out.)

that look backwards and point to history are the fans. The players do not. The coaches most certainly do not.

I can guarantee you the league office staff does not.

Vanderbilt is the 8th worst SEC football team this season. At worst. We are certainly dominant in the other major sports.

We are a charter member. And the SEC bylaws prevent the expulsion of charter members. To top it all off, we are the academic blanket that excuses all the dirty laundry the SEC is constantly piling up. We are the last vestige of honor, innocence, and amateurism the league has left. We are the league’s guise.

We are going nowhere. And as we continue to ruffle feathers with football improvement, as we start to compete for your recruits — and win them over — we will continue to be the heart of rumors like these. Rumors that never materialize and only damage the credibility of those that attempt to use them.

We are not going anywhere. WE ARE COMING. BEWARE.

Football is one sport, alot of other sports Vandy can dominate in. Even though football is the top money making sport, still not the only one.

Geez, things sure have changed since I graduated in 2005. Never thought I’d heard those two words in the same sentence.