Anchor Drop, May 22, 2020: The New AD is Here

Good morning.

Well, after close to four months as the interim Athletic Director, Candice Storey Lee is now officially just the Athletic Director as of yesterday. Lee is the first black woman to serve as the Athletic Director at an SEC school, and only the fifth black Athletic Director at all (joining her two immediate predecessors at Vanderbilt, Auburn’s Allan Greene, and former Georgia AD Damon Evans.)

The Hustler had an interview with the new AD yesterday, and the reaction to Lee’s elevation seems to be mostly positive, particularly from current and former Vanderbilt student-athletes. The main dissent yesterday came from Chris Lee of VandySports.com, who appeared on George Plaster’s radio show yesterday to discuss the new hire. The main opposition comes from the fact that Candice Storey Lee hasn’t worked anywhere other than Vanderbilt during her career, and the most notable thing she did as an associate athletic director was leading the search to replace Melanie Balcomb as women’s basketball coach (which led to the hiring of Stephanie White.)

I’m on the fence about this one. Most opinions on this really come down to whether you think David Williams is a good AD or not; if no, I can see why you wouldn’t want his right hand to be taking over the Athletic Department. In some ways it’s comparable to hiring a coordinator to be a first-time head coach: there’s only so much information you have on somebody who hasn’t been in charge before. (As far as the White hire goes, no, that hasn’t been very good, but then we all thought that was kind of a slam dunk at the time.)

With that being the big news of the day, I don’t really have anything else. Have a good Friday, everyone.