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Commodore Notebook: January 16 1/16/2006 By Rod Williamson Commodore Talent Pool Continues to Rise There are five finalists for the O’Charley’s Dinner of Champions Amateur Athlete of the Year Award and four of them are Commodores. Pre-season All-America baseball pitcher David Price, Masters low amateur Luke List, SEC record-breaking football receiver Earl Bennett and SEC Player of the Year Jay Cutler join Belmont women’s basketball star Alysha Clark in this year’s field. This award is presented to Middle Tennessee area amateur/collegiate athlete, coach or team that had an outstanding sports achievement. Who would you choose as your winner? While most of you are likely to say “Jay Cutler”, a case could easily be made for any one of the group to be the recipient. What impresses me is not just the quality of our nominees, it is the quantity! Going back in time only a few years ago, we would typically have two or three outstanding candidates for our Female Athlete of the Year Award but we would have to stretch the definition to find competition for our Male Athlete of the Year. Any one of these four current ‘Dores would have been shoo-ins for such an honor back then, now we have grown our overall program to where basketball, for decades our most successful men’s program, doesn’t land its top player on this list, despite having enjoyed considerable success. What does this mean? For starters, it shows that our recruiting across the board has taken a giant step forward since 2000. More and more elite student-athletes are choosing Vanderbilt in virtually every sport we sponsor. Many of our head coaches have been at Vanderbilt a number of years and have become very good at understanding how to explain and sell the many strengths of the University. When these advantages are expertly laid out before top high school students, it becomes obvious why more and more “blue-chippers” are choosing Vanderbilt. By the way, Cutler is also a finalist for Nashville’s Sports Person of the Year along with Sounds manager Frank Kremblas, Predators’ general manager David Poile and goalie Thomas Vokoun and Cumberland baseball coach Woody Hunt, who won his 1,000th game in 2005. The O’Charley Dinner of Champions will be held February 13. Date with Legends The Nashville Vanderbilt Club is planning a special event for this Saturday’s men’s basketball game with Mississippi State. “A Date with Legends” will be honoring members of the 1950-51 SEC Tourney Champion team along with the 1955-56 Golden Anniversary team. Remember that this game is televised by CBS and starts at 2:45 p.m. Big Hoops Week In addition to the national television cameras Saturday, our women’s basketball team will host Tennessee Thursday night with the game being televised on FOXSportsNet. Tip time is 7:00 p.m. The week’s action gets going Wednesday with the men hosting South Carolina at 7 p.m. Tickets to all three games are on sale.
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