Feb. 11, 2011
Quick Slant is an array of brief insights and occasionally opinionated overviews of collegiate athletics in general and the Vanderbilt Commodores in particular.
- Play ball! Our baseball team will play three intra-squad scrimmages this weekend in preparation for the rapidly approaching season. Admission is free Friday (4 p.m.), Saturday (9:30 a.m.) and Sunday (11:30 a.m.).
A kick-off meeting for the National Commodore Club’s Commodores on Board program was held last Saturday with a diverse mix of several dozen members of the NCC in attendance. In recent years, membership has stalled while tuition costs and other scholarship-related costs have increased – we now have an annual $12.3 million scholarship obligation for our 325 student-athletes! We must bolster our membership roll and generate more annual support.
If you care enough about the Commodores to be reading this column and are not a current member of the NCC – at any giving level – we urge you to pay attention to this new program. There is even room in Mr. C’s Junior Commodore Club for grandparents to enroll their grandkids under age 14. We need everyone to be “All In.”
- Many of you asked for a game-like Black and Gold Game to end spring football and thanks for Coach James Franklin, you will have one. The date is Sunday, April 17 under the lights at a time to be determined. Why Sunday night? In brief, there are many factors including NCAA spring practice policies, the university’s class and spring break schedule, Easter weekend and so forth. Sunday evening was selected as we want to attract our students, many of whom will be occupied that Friday and Saturday with the annual Rites of Spring. We anticipate Vandyville and other trappings as we ramp this event up. More on this later; save the date.
- Pay attention to this: we are moving to a two-tier price schedule for football tickets. Fans renewing their season tickets or purchasing tickets new ones can do so at 2010 prices up to the Black and Gold Game on April 17. After that date, a price increase will go into effect in order to help balance our ever expanding budget. If you would be concerned over a price hike, the easy answer is act before mid-April.
- Football’s national letter of intent signing day is a big deal in this conference. Preliminary reports show we hosted over 50% more unique visitors (individual computers on a given day) on our vucommodores.com site. An eight-second Twitter video clip of our coaches reacting to good news had 800 views in just minutes.
