Anchor Drop, January 31, 2020: Prairie View A&M Invitational

Good morning.

This is a bowling and tennis weekend, as they all should be. The bowling team travels to Arlington, Texas, where they’ll compete in the Prairie View A&M Invitational starting at 12:15 PM today. No, I have no idea why the Prairie View A&M Invitational is in Arlington. Vanderbilt has won both of its 2020 tournaments.

Women’s tennis, ranked #13 nationally, goes on the road to face Northwestern today at 4:00 PM CT. Men’s tennis hosts Middle Tennessee at 3:00 PM.

Women’s basketball was competitive, but lost 78-69 to Tennessee on Thursday night. But that’s not even the most interesting women’s basketball score to me from last night.

(South Carolina led 32-2 at halftime and won 87-32. Really let up in the second half.)

Meanwhile, this led to the best takes.

So, of course, Chris Lee and Seabass did a podcast yesterday where they talked about what if Greg Sankey told Vanderbilt to use that money on facilities or lose their SEC membership? It doesn’t seem logical, because that is and will always be a PR nightmare for the SEC. The only way a P5 conference is expelling a charter member is over a Baylor situation, not a “we don’t care about sports” situation.

(Meanwhile, don’t read the replies. A lot of Vol fans really, really care what Vanderbilt does with its SEC revenue distribution check.)

For the record, while I’d like Vanderbilt to invest in athletics (mostly because I want Vanderbilt to win in sports, and this is apparently what you have to do to win in sports), I don’t actually care what fans of other SEC schools think. On the other hand, covering college sports as a revenue generation and facilities arms race instead of, like, sports played on a field will continue to annoy me no matter what.

Anyway, there’s your news for the day. Enjoy the bowling and tennis.