"Vanderbilt won a national championship in SPORTS"
I watched a bit of the College World Series, but don't claim to be an expert on college baseball. Still, I think it's notable that Vanderbilt won the national championship. Pretty big accomplishment for a small private school that not only doesn't even have an athletic department, they compete in the SEC.
I know Vandy baseball's been good for awhile and they produced David Price, but this still seems weird to me.
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6. "SEC teams still have ridiculous booster funds for anything, however" In response to Reply # 4
when the conference decided it wanted to be good at softball 20 years ago, they poured a bunch of money into it, and now they're equal with the Pac-12 (who dominated the sport since its inception).
Vandy is great because they hired a great coach in Tim Corbin over a decade ago.
7. "true. even more impressive doing it w/o a pipeline" In response to Reply # 6
I was almost halfway down the roster before I got to a player from TN and he was from Chat-town
To my understanding, college baseball programs like to have a travel club or two that acts as a feeder. I would have thought that being in Nashville would have given them one
8. "Central Tennessee seems kind of "meh" on baseball" In response to Reply # 7
I mean, both Sonny Gray and David Price are from a pretty small radius around Nashville. So it's not like there's zero interest. But in my time there it really seemed like high schools were as about as unanimously devoted to one sport (football) as I'd seen anywhere I'd lived. Shit, even in Minneapolis basketball could distract a small amount of winter attention from high school hockey.
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I grew up with Sonny Gray, and he was always more of a legend and known for being a quarterback, even though he was obviously better at baseball. He reached "immortal" status after winning two state championships in football.
Ross Mitchell, another friend of mine, is an ace pitcher at Mississippi State, and he's from the same high school as David Price. The pitching talent here is insane.
10. "Vandy is on the comeup" In response to Reply # 0 Sat Jun-28-14 09:05 AM by DonVito
Slight bias as an alum, but as has been pointed out if they can lever the Stanford model and get kids who value education, it's got a lot of great selling points finally going in its favor. Nashville is a great city no longer associated with just Waylon and Johnny, they're finally investing in facilities (not like Oregon or Bama or even UTK, but to the tune of at least staying somewhat competitive) and they can pitch the SEC angle. Other than TAMU they've got by far the second biggest endowment in the conference, the trustees are finally seeing the value of spending a little on athletics.
They won't be playing for a CFB championship, but they have proven over the last few years that they can beat the historic powerhouses and aren't the doremats they've been known for pre 2005. If Mason can keep the momentum, and even sell some of the cool black coach angle that worked for James Franklin, they can at least go bowling every year.
And Corbin is a hell of a coach, this was far from his best team, major disappointments in earlier years. They're not going anywhere in baseball.
11. "Football is coming back down to Earth." In response to Reply # 10 Sat Jun-28-14 10:28 AM by BennyTenStack
Mason isn't 1/10th the recruiter that Franklin was/is. Franklin is probably one of the top 5 recruiters in the country, and a top 10 coach. Mason has done a pretty sobering job recruiting so far, and that talent level is about to drop down to where it used to be. He signed a bad class last year, which wasn't entirely his fault, and he's on the way to having a pretty brutal recruiting class this year.
Baseball, on the other hand, has been on the come up ever since Tim Corbin was hired. He may be the best coach in the game.
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