May 29, 2015
Director of Athletics David Williams said Friday that Vanderbilt’s portion of the Southeastern Conference’s revenue sharing will help fund student-athlete welfare initiatives as well as other programs that will enhance the experiences available to the university’s 350 student-athletes.
With new NCAA-driven programs expected to add as much as $2 million to the Commodores’ annual budget, the added SEC revenue comes at an ideal time.
“The new cost of attendance legislation significantly increases our budget,” Williams says. “Cost of attendance is a figure calculated by each institution to determine the true cost of attendance per student. To that figure Vanderbilt will be adding the cost of two round-trips to each scholarship athlete’s home. This is terrific, especially for the young people thousands of miles from home, but it needs to be funded. These new monies help.”
Student-athletes welfare has become a major focus in collegiate athletics. Members of the so-called Power 5 Conferences — the SEC, ACC, Big 10, Pac-10 and Big 12 — have also been granted permission to enhance the nutrition options of their busy student-athletes.
Vanderbilt has added a “refueling station” in McGugin Center, a specially designated room for student-athletes stocked with nutritious snacks to be consumed in-between regularly scheduled meals.
Williams also noted that additional revenue can help fund study abroad and international team travel – two areas in which Vanderbilt Athletics has taken national leadership.
The department has regularly sent a dozen or more student-athletes to study in foreign countries during the sport’s off-season. Of those taking currently taking advantage of that opportunity now is football’s Ralph Webb, who set freshman rushing marks last fall.
The women’s golf team, SEC champions in 2014, will travel to Ireland in mid-June, the latest in a string of Commodore teams to see other parts of the world.
Vanderbilt also recently created an innovative summer internship program in which student-athletes from a wide range of sport programs will have the opportunity to intern at Nashville-area businesses, gaining valuable work experience common to non-athletes but previously hard to obtain for the student-athlete training year-round.
National statistics show that 99.3 percent of all student-athletes will not play professionally so the chance to see how business works up close becomes an invaluable welfare addition. Commodore student-athletes will be interning 30-hours per week in major businesses around the city, in law offices, health care, political campaigns and charities among other industries.
Outgoing SEC Commissioner Michael Slive announced today a total distribution of $455.8 million, the largest in conference history. The total includes $436.8 million distributed from the conference office, as well as $19.0 million dollars of revenue retained by institutions that participated in 2014-15 bowl games.
“The ability to provide a significant distribution of revenue is more critical than ever for our institutions as they offer more financial and educational benefits to current and former student-athletes,” Slive said. “Beginning this year, our schools will fund new costs associated with providing scholarships based on full cost of attendance, enhance lifetime educational opportunities to former student-athletes and they are developing new facilities such as athletic nutrition centers to the benefit of student-athletes.”
Slive emphasized the importance that conference revenue distribution plays in offering scholarship opportunities to student-athletes in a wide array of women’ s and men’s sports and the continued ability to compete for championships in those sports. With more than 6,500 student-athletes receiving financial aid on an annual basis in 21 sports sponsored by the SEC, conference schools have won 81 national titles in 19 different sports in Slive’s 13 years as commissioner.
“This increased revenue is important for our athletics programs to continue to fully support broad-based athletics programs for both male and female student-athletes and to give them the opportunity to compete at the highest level, both in the classroom and in competition,” Slive said.
The total distribution amount is comprised of revenue generated from television agreements, post-season bowl games, the College Football Playoff, the SEC Football Championship, the SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament, NCAA Championships and a supplemental surplus distribution.
