Anchor Drop, August 13, 2019: 18 Days to Kickoff

Good morning.

We are now 18 days away from Vanderbilt football’s season opener against the Georgia Bulldogs. There are two players on the roster who wear #18. One is redshirt junior QB Mo Hasan, who completed 4-of-6 passes for 38 yards and also rushed for 45 yards on 7 attempts as Kyle Shurmur’s backup last season. The other 18 is linebacker Colin Anderson; the redshirt sophomore dealt with a foot injury last season but still played in eight games and made four tackles on the year, including a sack in the MTSU game.

Vanderbilt’s defending national runner-up bowling team released its schedule for the 2019-20 season on Monday. The season opens in New Orleans on October 18.

Cornerbacks coach Terrance Brown was recognized in 247 Sports’ “30 Under 30” list of the top 30 coaches under the age of 30.

Vanderbilt’s Bri Gross was a part of the U.S. under-19 national lacrosse team, which won the World Championship.

Soccer’s Maya Antoine was called up to Canada’s U-20 national team in advance of the upcoming U-20 World Cup.

Hey, remember how we won a national championship?

Off the West End

So, USA Today for some reason is raising concerns (really just repeating concerns raised by athletic directors) about the exploding salaries of coaches in non-revenue sports.

The “why” actually isn’t difficult to figure out. Power 5 athletic departments are currently swimming in cash thanks to lucrative television contracts. For a few reasons — namely, the universities and their athletic departments are legally nonprofits — that money has to go somewhere. And as the revenue checks continue to come in, schools are finding that there is only so much they can spend on football and men’s basketball, the two revenue sports — plus, Title IX considerations come into play here. (Never mind that boosters will gladly pay for coaching salaries and facility improvements in football, not so much in women’s lacrosse.)

But of course, the other thing you’re seeing is that athletic departments are competitive even if it’s in a vanity project like women’s lacrosse. The “concern” identified by athletic departments (via Dan Wolken) is that those are just sunk costs.

But what’s really the problem here? The problem, from best I can tell, is that schools were often only half-heartedly attempting to compete in non-revenue sports and now they’re making real investments in those programs. If you’re really paying attention, the schools that have spent the last several decades engaged in a football arms race are now mad that they’ve been goaded into arms races in the non-revenue sports as well.

Of course, that money’s not going to the athletes themselves thanks to the latest court smackdown of an attempt to circumvent the NCAA rule. Note that the lawsuit only wanted the court to rule that football players are employees entitled to compensation. And now we, of course, are back to the same argument I made a few weeks ago that college football players increasingly don’t see themselves as a part of the universities they represent on the field.

On the other hand, the NCAA caved and amended the rules regarding agents, such that they no longer require a bachelor’s degree (just being in good standing with the NBPA.)

From The Athletic ($): Group text: Predicting ACC Football in 2019; State of the Hoops Program: Washington.

And also, former Tennessean columnist Joe Rexrode is now at The Athletic, which seemed completely obvious when he announced a couple of weeks ago that he was leaving the Tennessean but staying in Nashville. But now it’s official.

Scoreboard

MLB: Yankees 8, Orioles 5 (Game 1) ... Indians 6, Red Sox 5 ... Yankees 11, Orioles 8 (Game 2) ... Nationals 7, Reds 6 ... Blue Jays 19, Rangers 4 ... Diamondbacks 8, Rockies 6 ... Pirates 10, Angels 2 ... Rays 10, Padres 4.