Jan. 8, 2015
Heads were turned a few weeks back when the mail was being opened and out fell an unsolicited National Commodore Club membership check from a current senior student-athlete. We won’t mention the name or sport but when we followed up, this was the reply:
I gave to the NCC (a very small amount!) for a few reasons. The first was that I wanted to go ahead and get my name in the system. Vanderbilt and the athletic department have done so much for me with regards to my personal, academic, and athletic growth over the past four years. I really believe that I’ve learned more about life, people, and teamwork here than I could have anywhere else – so I have the desire to give back in the future.
Needless to say, this was considered a special gift. And it won’t surprise you that this new NCC member has been winning “both ways” – athletically and academically – for four years. We hope our alumni feel this way; we were blown away that a current one understood about giving back so soon.
A story in a North Carolina paper caught our eye. It said that the hiring of former Auburn football coach Gene Chizik as North Carolina’s defensive coordinator was “being held up” by a background check. Duh! How long will it take the media to understand that hiring anyone in today’s world is no longer as simple as a handshake or verbal agreement? Everyone gets checked. But reporters/bloggers hear that a coach or administrator is poised to take a job, rush to put the word out and then seemed puzzled that the school doesn’t confirm or can’t announce it for days. Portions of these checks are handled by outside agencies that review a person’s record in every city and state they have lived in to be certain they are not hiring someone with skeletons in their closet. It’s Standard Operating Procedure.
The SEC Network occasionally puts a live microphone on a basketball head coach and when it does, a member of the school’s media office sits in the truck to monitor the selected audio bites. That was my duty when our women’s team played Tennessee and while I wouldn’t want to spend all game, every game there it was an enlightening experience to see how much expertise is among the 15 or so producers, directors and technicians and how many different video screens can fit into that modest-sized vehicle. During this game, we chose five of Coach Balcomb’s sound bites, all coming during various time-outs, that were aired and complemented the broadcast, giving the on-air announcers good fodder to help explain the flow of the game.