June 8, 2017
By Zac Ellis
VUCommodores.com
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Last week, presidents, athletics directors and head coaches from the Southeastern Conference converged on Destin, Fla. for the annual SEC Spring Meetings, at which a number of important topics concerning the conference were discussed and debated.
The Commodore Insider Podcast caught up with longtime Vanderbilt athletics director David Williams for a wide-ranging recap of this year’s SEC Spring Meetings. Williams touches on a number of subjects from the meetings, including the following:
On being one of the longest-tenured ADs in the SEC:
“[Kentucky’s] Mitch Barnhart and I basically came in as ADs at the same time… When I came in, the conference was a conference that had a number of schools on probation. There was a lot of issue around that. You go to a point in time when the big issue centered around expansion… It really depends on what’s going on in the marketplace of college athletics that makes the meetings so different.”
On representing the only private school in the SEC at spring meetings:
“There are some things that we see completely different. The great part about the group is the level of respect amongst the group, that even if my issue or our issues are completely different from them, there is an ability and a desire to hear what we want to say.”
On the SEC’s graduate transfer policy:
“Where the debate in the room came with graduate transfers was within the conference. That’s where the big debate was, over whether or not you should be able to transfer within the conference as a graduate transfer and not have to sit out. That did get a lot of debate.”
On regulation of staff sizes in college sports:
“There is some recognition that maybe we need to be spending a little bit more time thinking about student-athlete welfare. If the increase in staffs can relate to student-athlete welfare, it’s ok. But if it’s just to increase the staff, i don’t know.”