Nov. 11, 2015
Quick Slant is an array of brief insights and occasionally opinionated overviews of collegiate athletics in general and the Vanderbilt Commodores in particular.
Our new Hall of Fame class has StarPower! Readers may wonder why it took so long for superstars such as Jay Cutler and David Price to make our Hall (we’ve just had six classes) and the reason is that we want inductees to be able to attend our big Hall of Fame Dinner and give an acceptance speech in person. All five prior dinners have come in September when many professional athletes are in season. This one will come January 22, one of the best nights of the year for inspiration. These draw full houses north of 400 people and you would likely enjoy being one of them.
Anthony Azama, who played football here in the Gerry DiNardo era, has made a nice career in college athletics administration. He just landed a big job at Columbia University after a long stint at Miami (Ohio).
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In last week’s Slant we talked about the neat pre-game activities for Saturday’s football game with Kentucky, which is our Military Appreciation Day. One minor change – the special forces Para-Commando parachutists are now coming into Vanderbilt Stadium at halftime, not pregame. We will be honoring Wounded Warriors and Courage Beyond veterans during pre-game and the Anchor Presentation will be special with a Naval Rear Admiral, father of a Vanderbilt student, as the focal point.
This writer is still trying to process the complicated events at the University of Missouri. We don’t pretend to know the issues at other institutions (it’s challenging enough to keep up here) and insider accounts vary. We also can’t properly discuss complexity in this space. I have several competing thoughts as I ponder the notion of major administrators being forced to resign from protests: the first, those of us on a campus simply must be in tune with the entire community, particularly in areas of diversity and student welfare where old ways of thinking and responding often no longer fly. On the other hand, the notion that a college ball team can impact how a university is going to function strikes me as not such a good idea.
Our athletic communications staff entertained eight members of the NCAA Communications team Wednesday for 90 minutes of discussion. There was a good exchange of ideas and information but the best result was simply getting two groups striving for similar goals but working a couple hundred miles apart to become better acquainted with each other.