Vanderbilt Ready to Keep Investing in Football After Historic Season and House Settlement
Vanderbilt has numerous options for distributing revenue sharing with a two-time national baseball champion and both men's and women's basketball coming off NCAA Tournament berths. Combined with a history of more losing seasons than bowl berths, it seemingly would be an easy decision to invest anywhere but football.
Not for the Commodores. 'This is the SEC,' Vanderbilt athletic director Candice Storey Lee said Tuesday. 'You have to invest and invest at a high level.' The decision is more complex with the SEC's lone private university coming off one of its best all-around athletic seasons in years. Lee wouldn't specify if Vanderbilt will follow the 75–15–5–5 formula that has become a popular revenue-sharing plan with the House settlement that would send 75 percent of revenue-share money to football, followed by men's basketball, then women's basketball.
Investing more in football isn't just the cost of doing business in the Southeastern Conference. Lee and Chancellor Daniel Diermeier lured Clark Lea away from Notre Dame because they wanted to turn Vanderbilt into a consistent winner, which the Commodores haven't been in decades. In 2021, Vanderbilt announced its biggest football stadium renovation in 40 years with a complete redesign and rebuild of each end zone. The south end zone will be ready for the season opener Aug. 30.
All the spending is easier to justify after 2024. With quarterback Diego Pavia, the Commodores went 7–6 and won their first bowl since 2013. The season's highlight was the program's first win over an AP No. 1–ranked team, with the Commodores never trailing against Alabama last October. Lea said last season's success is starting to break through the cynicism around Vanderbilt football. 'We all see the opportunity that we have right now,' Lea said. 'And I think for those of us that have been in this really…certainly for me, this being year five, I'm so excited to feel like I have something at stake, to feel like chips are on the table.'
Football wasn't the only beneficiary of that initial $300 million investment. The north end zone now features the Huber Center, which opened last fall, giving men's basketball and women's basketball each a floor complete with separate practice courts, locker rooms, film rooms, and hangout areas for players.
The timing was perfect on a campus where women's soccer reached its first Sweet 16 and women's tennis hosted an NCAA regional:
– Vanderbilt men's basketball went 20–13 in coach Mark Byington's debut season, earning the Commodores' first NCAA Tournament berth since 2017.
– The women beat in-state rival Tennessee twice in a season for the first time, went 22–11, and earned a second straight NCAA Tournament berth. With Mikayla Blakes setting records as a freshman and Khamil Pierre back, coach Shea Ralph is targeting titles and the program's first Final Four since 1993. Ralph said she's glad to be working at Vanderbilt for an athletic director who played women's basketball at the school. Lee graduated in 2000 after four seasons playing for coach Jim Foster. Ralph's concern now is how female athletes' fair-market value is assessed. 'Are we being compared to other women? Which is going to set us back,' Ralph said.
The practice court, once shared, now will be used by volleyball, Vanderbilt's 17th sport, debuting this fall. The south end zone will have a space that can be used by coach Tim Corbin and his baseball program, which just earned the No. 1 national seed for the NCAA Tournament after winning the SEC Tournament. A training table in that end zone also will be open to all athletes.
'It's clear that we're trying to, yes, invest where you get the largest return on investment, but also invest where all of our student athletes can be positively impacted,' Lee said.
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