The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

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The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by dorelover82 »

As a diehard VU Football fan from the '70 until today I fully realize the futility we have faced as a fan base. However, this is different. With the combination of the portal and the way coaches cut scholarships a school like Vanderbilt succeeding in football and basketball will be nearly impossible. With recruitment happening from one school to another, it is unlikely teams at the bottom will ever be able to overcome the natural draw of good players away from Vanderbilt.

Baseball in the current situation has operated by sending out scholarship players in order to improve the roster. This leads to breaking of commitments from coaches to players. Now we see the reverse, where players don't live up to their promises. Just a reality. We benefit in baseball and suffer in football. sad state of affairs, but just a reality.


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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by BILTMORE »

I agree with this.
I was a kid in the 70s and only a passive fan in the 80s, but I've been pretty die hard since about '90 on.

What we witnessed on Saturday has become the new normal. The quality gap between Vandy and the top of our conference is so wide, that it seems unlikely it can be overcome without a complete abandonment of the "student athlete" concept.

That's what every other team in our conference has done, as have the the top dogs in most of the other power five conferences. And even then, some of these schools are still struggling. Look at Florida State, the "alma mater" of Jamies Winston and a program I'd wager has cut every corner in the book in order to succeed, and look where they are.
Look at USC - one of the most infamously mercenary programs in the history of the ncaa and look where they are. Then you've got all these large directional schools trying to claw their way in to relevance.

The transfer portal plus the disruption of COVID left several schools (including Vanderbilt) in unprecedented disrepair. While I applaud CCL for leading with culture and integrity, and while I'm hopeful that the Barton Simmons recruiting matrix can find us diamonds in the rough, I just think that the sport has revolutionized itself into something completely different than it's ever been.

I don't see me or the OP as pessimistic. I see us as realistic.

Vanderbilt is not playing the same game as the rest of our conference. We may as well be fielding a cricket team to play football.
At least that's how it looked on Saturday and pretty much every other time we've played the tops in our conference that last several years.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by Seadog73 »

And neither of you touched on the impact NIL will have. Bama's QB had a 7 figure deal before he took a snap. I hate to think how NIL deals will impact recruiting, regardless of the market ("The City").
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by FayetteDore »

Seadog73 wrote: Mon Sep 27, 2021 7:56 pm And neither of you touched on the impact NIL will have. Bama's QB had a 7 figure deal before he took a snap. I hate to think how NIL deals will impact recruiting, regardless of the market ("The City").
You beat me to it: I was just about to add NIL, furthering the distance between the haves and the have nots.

So let me throw in two more: the upcoming addition of two new superpowers to the SEC, Texas and Oklahoma.

The whole landscape does not look good for places like VU. I think it's too early to talk about leaving. But I think there's a decision point coming within the next decade. At some point, the gap may be so wide that the SEC money may not be worth it.

But that day isn't here yet. And CCL deserves time to try to close the gap.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by jpmando »

Dramatic thinking and approach will be necessary..

Vanderbilt needs media buzz and positive news-we are in desperate times-and I do not mean just this past Saturday.

Only way to get it? A stunning move of grand scale. And I don't mean a new stadium necessarily. Adding a mentor, offensive genius-sure that would not necessarily have helped the defense last Saturday, but we have to be noticed now in a positive light , big time. We have to get top players-have to target the Jonathan Goff type players/students. But they have to have a reason to want to be here.

I know most of you think the Spurrier proposal as a consultant is absurd-but someone give me a better idea to
grab attention and relevancy. If not him-then surely another name. We are in a dangerous slide I believe, a hole so deep that we may not be able to recover.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by Go Vandy! »

FayetteDore wrote: Mon Sep 27, 2021 8:18 pm...I think it's too early to talk about leaving.
If you mean voluntarily leaving, nobody in their right mind would ever consider that, and they should be fired if they did. Give up $45 MILLION- soon to be $60 MILLION a year? Not a chance.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by Golddore68 »

NIL is going to put Vanderbilt at a huge disadvantage to other SEC schools.

At every other SEC school, their team is the only thing in the city. Ole Miss sports is the only thing in Oxford, Miss. LSU sports are the only thing in Baton Rouge, La. UT sports is the only thing in Knoxville. Florida sports is the only thing in Gainesville, Fla. Kentucky sports is the only thing in Lexington, Ky. And so on.

Most everyone in these cities follows and is a fan of their teams. Probably 90 percent or more of the cities follows their teams.

So local businesses like Jim Bob’s Auto Sales in Starkville will want players from Mississippi State to endorse his cars, and he’ll pay the players umpteen hundred or thousand dollars to do it.

But in Nashville it’s not just Vanderbilt sports. You’ve got pro sports, the Titans and Predators. You’ve also got other colleges like Lipscomb, Trevecca, Belmont, TSU. Vanderbilt doesn’t have 90 percent of the Nashville population supporting them, probably at best, 30 percent. So local businesses aren’t going to give Vanderbilt players the opportunity to make the type of money for endorsements that other SEC schools would have.

Maybe some of the businesses on West End might, but that’s not many.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by Johnmn555 »

Here's a not far fetched hypothetical: our current 12 game conference losing streak extends to 27 by the end of next year, as we try, not entirely successfully, to close the personnel gap. What then? I'm not sure at what point futility and multi-season conference losing streaks will become a breaking point. There is such a point, but I don't know where it is. Every development in college football cuts against us at the moment.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by FayetteDore »

Go Vandy! wrote: Mon Sep 27, 2021 9:55 pm
FayetteDore wrote: Mon Sep 27, 2021 8:18 pm...I think it's too early to talk about leaving.
If you mean voluntarily leaving, nobody in their right mind would ever consider that, and they should be fired if they did. Give up $45 MILLION- soon to be $60 MILLION a year? Not a chance.
Yeah, you don't know. And you clearly haven't read the whole thread.

An ethical institution of integrity and honor, whose primary foci are quality higher education, research and service, would certainly consider whether constantly subjecting its student-athletes to an increasingly un-level playing field dominated by mercenaries, in the environment described above, is worth the equivalent of a paltry 0.5% return on its endowment. IF this rebuilding effort fails, IF what we saw Saturday becomes more the norm than the exception, and IF the home stadium continues being everyone else's home stadium -- it would be their duty to consider. Not now, but sometime down the road.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by charlestonalum »

Add to the list of additional real threats Global Warming and a belligerent/expansive China. HELP!

Don't forget we are talking athletics that at best are an opportunity for gifted athletes to perform and for fans to be entertained. The outcome of these games does not define the quality of players and coaches as human beings and certainly does not define the character of the fans. This is exactly why I will support Vanderbilt sports teams till the day I die.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by dore74 »

Agree with all the negativity and the great challenges we face. Then i look to Stanford, Duke, Northwestern and Notre Dame, all very high academic schools--and i get it with much stronger histories of success and not in the same semi-professional league we are--that nevertheless have found greater success than us. So it is doable.
Paradoxically, our biggest weakness is actually our biggest strength. Offering kids a first class education and challenging them to grow and deal with the dual challenges over time should be even more helpful living in a world where not-so-good doesn't cut it in the business/professional world. Will we compete well with football factories that provide Ivy League football educations with higher admission rates into the NFL, highly, highly doubtful. Will we be able to attract kids who are really good but know they're not NFL material, hopefully yes. And further, parents will prefer their kids at a school like ours.
Frankly, a guy like Clark Lea is the right type for exactly this approach. Poach, to me, was a used car salesman and the whole laissez faire (to put it charitably) attitude that led to the rape debacle is on his style of leadership. Let's see what Clark can do over the next few years.
While we may in the end form/join a Magnolia League type conference, I'm very interested to see if we can't succeed in the SEC after all. (By success I'm thinking attaining from time to time a 6-2 conference record in football and winning the SEC in W & M hoops as well as in baseball even after the GOAT retires.)
Given the support of the new administration we'll see whether we can pull this off id fairly short order i suspect.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by coachinwaiting »

I've been a fan of college football in general since the 1960's. During that span, many things have changed, some for the better and some for the worse. One thing that has been constant has been the call for changes from the fans, and the disagreement over changes when they come.

Changes in anything have ramifications both good and bad. Often those ramifications are anticipated by some and dismissed by others. It has long been a complaint of fans that coaches have the ability to move freely from job to job despite lucrative contracts, with impunity. Players had to commit to one school. Well, that has now changed, and just as some warned years ago, it's not the panacea that many expected.

It has also long been a contention by some fans that players were short-changed by not being able to profit from their talents on the field. Sales of popular player's jerseys was often cited as a place where revenue should be shared. Old school fans and administrators warned of problems associated with that and were called old fogies who didn't want to share a piece of the pie. Sometimes old fogies know what they are talking about. You can't let the genie out of the bottle in bits and pieces, it's either in or out.

Adjusting to the new ways is what will separate the successful from the ones trampled on. A large part of that adjustment is merely deciding not to stand still.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by Go Vandy! »

On a slight tangent, MLB "purists" want baseball to return to what they first remember. NOBODY wants it to return to 8 teams each league in the original cities, because those people are dead.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by jpmando »

What I forsee is that at some point the SEC will determine that VU sports is costing them too much money, and not worth keeping around at current "salary". As they cut Vandy's annual share, some very major decisions will be in order.

I hope our leaders are looking at all long-term scenarios, even the most bizarre of possibilities.

How many persons 10 or even 5 years ago would have predicted the transfer portal or NIL? Much less COVID
and all its ramifications.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by AuricGoldfinger »

Lots of good points in this thread.

I wrote a post about some of this back on August 2, well before the season ever started: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=18839&p=153819#p153819.

Nothing in the last two months has changed my mind about what I wrote. If anything, the beginning of football season has in fact heightened the sense of urgency I feel. The start of the demolition of the south end zone at the conclusion of the season can't come fast enough, if only to make me feel we're doing some thing. But the fact is, we are starting from a deep, deep hole, and I think we're running out of time.

I was recently reading about the demise of Sears Roebuck and Kmart as retailers, and the one thing that stood out to me was, how could their management not see they were doomed long before they were forced into bankruptcy and near-certain final liquidation? I know ultimately their management and ownership didn't particularly care that they were doomed--all they wanted was the real estate--but their mistakes started long before a guy like Eddie Lampert got hold of them. The world was changing rapidly around both companies, yet they refused to see it and made one colossal mistake after another.

I know Vandy has been a consistent loser in college football since WWII, and I know all the reasons why. $300 million in capital investment (not even all of which is for football) doesn't even buy a magic wand to make all that go away. But the one thing I realized after this past weekend is how we desperately need something tangible to show the world that we're doing some thing. And admittedly, it may not work. It likely won't be enough by itself. But unlike when we sucked in 1979, or 1989, or 1999, or even 2009, our sins and failures weren't as glaringly obvious as they are now. The perception of the program is now fed by a constant torrent of live TV, social media, and internet geniuses. (Yes, I see the irony of that statement.)

VU seems to finally be doing a lot of the right things. Time will tell whether it's enough to even get us back to competing for the middle-of-the-pack in the SEC, or if our hand will be forced by external forces we can't harness.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by FayetteDore »

Auric, I remember that thread but couldn't find it until you just posted the link. It was a great post and even more prescient when viewed four games in, and especially after Saturday. I was among several who posted replies in that thread, making similar points as I did above. Others also made great points. It was a good discussion -- the kind that distinguishes this board from other SEC boards I occasionally look at.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by coachinwaiting »

AuricGoldfinger wrote: Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:02 pm Lots of good points in this thread.

I wrote a post about some of this back on August 2, well before the season ever started: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=18839&p=153819#p153819.

Nothing in the last two months has changed my mind about what I wrote. If anything, the beginning of football season has in fact heightened the sense of urgency I feel. The start of the demolition of the south end zone at the conclusion of the season can't come fast enough, if only to make me feel we're doing some thing. But the fact is, we are starting from a deep, deep hole, and I think we're running out of time.

I was recently reading about the demise of Sears Roebuck and Kmart as retailers, and the one thing that stood out to me was, how could their management not see they were doomed long before they were forced into bankruptcy and near-certain final liquidation? I know ultimately their management and ownership didn't particularly care that they were doomed--all they wanted was the real estate--but their mistakes started long before a guy like Eddie Lampert got hold of them. The world was changing rapidly around both companies, yet they refused to see it and made one colossal mistake after another.

I know Vandy has been a consistent loser in college football since WWII, and I know all the reasons why. $300 million in capital investment (not even all of which is for football) doesn't even buy a magic wand to make all that go away. But the one thing I realized after this past weekend is how we desperately need something tangible to show the world that we're doing some thing. And admittedly, it may not work. It likely won't be enough by itself. But unlike when we sucked in 1979, or 1989, or 1999, or even 2009, our sins and failures weren't as glaringly obvious as they are now. The perception of the program is now fed by a constant torrent of live TV, social media, and internet geniuses. (Yes, I see the irony of that statement.)

VU seems to finally be doing a lot of the right things. Time will tell whether it's enough to even get us back to competing for the middle-of-the-pack in the SEC, or if our hand will be forced by external forces we can't harness.
Auric, the reference to Sears/K-Mart is very relevant here. It should go down in the annals of poor business decisions that Sears, which was once a mail-order giant, chose to abandon the model on the precipice of the Amazon age. Instead of transitioning away from the printed catalog to a digital one, they just decided to go all in on walk-in customers in brick and mortar buildings. I hope Vanderbilt doesn't take a similar path.

Doing "something" without the right preparation isn't the answer, but doing "nothing" and hoping for the best is even worse. The optimum path is to make changes based on the new circumstances, and be willing to pivot and change as situations warrant. The football season is naturally going to saturate the news for now, and for the most part that means bad news. When the season ends on the day of the Tennessee game, I hope the powers that be at Vanderbilt will make an effort to take control of the narrative with an active agenda of change and forward-thinking. South end zone demolition would be a great sign of a "something" Vanderbilt needs.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by Go Vandy! »

AuricGoldfinger wrote: Tue Sep 28, 2021 5:02 pm...we are starting from a deep, deep hole, and I think we're running out of time.
Exactly. Malcolm Turner's $800 mil isn't looking so excessive after all. $300 mil gets us maybe to where the rest of the SEC was 10-15 years ago. Maybe longer. But there have been massive expenditures since then. Because, i think, every school now realizes without multiple $100s of millions, they will be left behind, and eventually left out.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by BILTMORE »

I didn't mention NIL because I honestly can't tell what it's impact will be. But if the past is any indication, it'll probably hurt Vandy more than it helps.
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Re: The state of college athletics is a bad combo for Vanderbilt Football

Post by AuricGoldfinger »

BILTMORE wrote: Wed Sep 29, 2021 11:32 am I didn't mention NIL because I honestly can't tell what it's impact will be. But if the past is any indication, it'll probably hurt Vandy more than it helps.
I know there's a school of thought that says NIL will level the playing field and funnel more top-flight athletes to non-traditional powers, but I guess I'm more cynical about that idea. I know there have been a handful of big NIL deals with athletes in unexpected places, but I believe so much of it will be driven by metrics like the number of social media followers he or she has. And for football, that's almost always going to benefit the biggest brand names.
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