Should Vanderbilt Be Dropped Out Of Power Five Conference?
It's been said before and will be repeated that Vanderbilt should be moved out of the SEC because the Commodores football program historically has been wrong, really bad for the majority of the last 40 years.
On Wednesday, Stewart Mandel of The Athletic published a mailbag article where a reader asked his opinion on moving "four Group of 5 teams to the Power 5 and demoting four P5 teams to the G5. Who do you pick, and where do you put them, and why?"
Naturally, s a sports guy, my curiosity took over, and I immediately opened the email, knowing full well that Vanderbilt would be at or near the top of the list.
My thought was correct, in fact, so accurate that it was Vanderbilt at the top of the list.
Now, his is an opinion mind you, and in no way am I wanting to demean Mandel because he is not the only one to express this thought, just the latest.
What was his reason for moving the Commodores, a charter member of the SEC out of the Power Five?
Move down to Group of 5:
• Vanderbilt: Let’s be honest: The Commodores are in the SEC primarily to serve as an easy football win while propping up the league’s academics. It has had four winning seasons in the past 40 years and has no hope of ever winning the conference.
Fine, let's be honest then and say that the Southeastern Conference is more than just football, as are the other conferences, but perhaps nowhere more so than in the SEC where the total number of national championships across all sports are far higher than just those in football.
Oh yeah, I'm fully aware that many fans and even some media personalities think only football and men's basketball count when it comes to importance across the sports landscape, and to an extent, I guess that's true.
It's indisputable that football is the sport that drives the bus in college athletics. Nothing else comes close in scope and popularity to matching what we witness in stadiums across this nation every fall Saturday.
The NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament would be as close as anything else to joining football as king of the collegiate sports world. Still, the regular season is further behind the tournament because many people don't get invested in college basketball until tournament time.
Baseball and women's basketball would be next, only slightly ahead of the non-revenue sports. Like basketball, many fans don't pay much attention to the diamond until Omaha or the women until the Final Four.
So why should Vanderbilt stay in the SEC, other than to give their 13 league brethren- Missouri might disagree- and easy football win, and prop up the league's academic standings?
Lets' go with men's basketball here.
It's true, the Commodores have never cut down the nets of a Final Four, but then neither have nine other SEC teams not named Kentucky, Florida or Arkansas.
That aside, the Commodores rank sixth all-time on the wins list for conference teams.
- Kentucky- 2,231 wins(114 years)
- Arkansas- 1,644 wins(94 years)
- Alabama- 1,635 wins(104 years)
- Missouri- 1,602 wins(111 years)
- Tennessee- 1,599 wins(108 years)
- Vanderbilt- 1,583 wins(115 years)
For the Commodores, being sixth behind only two of the three conference teams with titles, and following only three teams who never have one a claim themselves is not a terrible place to be in the records books.
We can go into baseball if you'd like, but most people know of the success of Tim Corbin and the Vandy Boys of late and their current status as defending national champions.
Oh, and by the way, that defending champ thing comes from the toughest conference in the country, just like SEC football.
Mandel's correct on Vanderbilt football, they are historically wrong. There is little hope of them competing for an SEC championship anytime soon. Still, then Kentucky, South Carolina, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, and Arkansas haven't won a league title or appeared in Atlanta since their entrance into or the inception of the conference championship game, and no one is ready to remove them from the league.
