Oct. 28, 2010
Quick Slant is an array of brief insights and occasionally opinionated overviews of collegiate athletics in general and the Vanderbilt Commodores in particular.
- The NCAA is being sued by a former Rice University athlete over claims it conspires with colleges to prohibit multiyear athletic scholarships. The football player was injured and lost his scholarship. David Williams believes this suit has the potential to change future recruiting as coaches could become forced to bid multi-year scholarship offers against each other. Currently, athletic grants are awarded on a year-by-year basis, giving some lee-way for a school or coach to not renew tenders they feel don’t merit renewing.
- The death of Roy Skinner feels like the end of an era to many older Commodore fans. The modest, soft spoken basketball coach was the biggest sports name in Music City long before the NFL, NHL, multi-million dollar contracts, sports talk radio and the internet arrived. He was “the people’s choice” as a candidate and ultimate inductee into our Athletic Hall of Fame in 2009 and few coaches ever remained as important to his former players.
- Linebacker John Stokes is a strong contender for a number of national awards, including post-graduate scholarships and sportsmanship/citizenship awards. While he is not unique on this campus, it would not take long to call the roll of his peers when combining his athletics, academics and service. Contrary to perception, Vanderbilt has not fared well in academic All-America voting over the years. While on some campuses one can shake a tree and two dozen 4.0 students will tumble, it is extremely difficult at Vanderbilt to exceed 3.50. There are always other candidates with higher g.p.a.’s and too many voters fail to differentiate the degree of difficulty.
- Speaking of All-Americans, the McGugin Center lobby has a flashy new display (pictured above) that spotlights our first-team athletic and academic All-Americans. The key words here are “first team” as some of our former stars did not achieve first-team status.
