Stack offered him in high school. Lives close to where Stack lives in metro Atlanta. His dad played DB at UGA. Big time player at Ohio State. Better overall than Manjon. Would have to throw a bag at him.

Wow! That's some quote from the losing coach... not sure he intended it to be such a backhanded complement or if he's just stating the obvious... but jeez...

He just saved his job. The team looks much improved. Good win today.

It started with watching a dominant Bryce Cunningham lead the Vandyboys to victory. The game ended in time for me to zip over to Memorial and witness an upset victory over the Gators. Our tradition is to celebrate Vandy victories with a Fireball shot and UT losses with a Screwball shot. With that done, I will read the meltdown on Volnation while watching my recordings of the TWO UT losses.

I think serious pressure needs to be applied to Stack. He can’t be given another year if he can’t get his fifth team to the Big Dance.

@Lukewyatt - what have you heard on this?

@Chris Lee @Joey Dwyer @Billy Derrick - heard anything?

Is Jason River-Torres hurt?

Regular season is over. Ended on a high note. Ride whatever momentum this win provides. Or maybe not.

This is the official game thread.

Per the Tennessean:

Mo Hasan had 17 career pass attempts and never made a start, but the former Vanderbilt quarterback said the Italian mob knew enough about him to offer $300,000 to fix college football games when he was with the Commodores.

More here.

Someone ask him why he wasn’t out there for the seniors!!

Interesting overview of what should be in a coaching contract, and how to fire for cause. Of course we don’t know what’s in stack’s contract and I don’t have great confidence in the ad.

Feels good. Feels real good.

Either way. The plot thickens.

...when it comes academics AND team buses.

Yesterday


Last spring

Only game I would go to with MBB in its current state. Was planning to drive up but my son is sick. Let me know if you’re interested.

In the event that what happened this week through reporting elsewhere about Stackhouse returning wasn't Occam's razor (you know who you are!), I'd keep an eye on tonight and tomorrow to see what happens.

If Vanderbilt is intending to make a coaching change and has some competency about what it is doing, it would typically make a move sometime Saturday or Sunday and get moving towards nailing down a coach immediately, and perhaps have a coach next week.

So if nothing happens today or tomorrow, either they're not making a change or they are and don't have the competency that others schools have in how it's done to maximize your pool of candidates.

The other possibility is a Stephanie White situation where they make the correct decision long after the fact based on attrition, at which point the candidate pool has really shrunk.

Also, Washington has made a move with Mike Hopkins and so I'd expect Washington State's Kyle Smith (mentioned with Vanderbilt should there be an opening) to be involved there.

That's all I've got this morning.

I absolutely hate the new SEC website. Half the information that was available during baseball games has been deleted by the new formats. Live updates of batters averages, pitchers ERAs, etc. have been deleted. This must have been designed by someone from the US Department of Education in their ongoing efforts to dumb down America. I'm not crazy about the way they update basketball games either. I know it's new, but someone needs to get kicked in the nuts for screwing up a good thing. Well crap, now I sound like just another half baked angry old fart with nothing better to do than complain about others; maybe I should seek the dem nomination for POTUS.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, I didn't have the time to write short letter so I wrote a long one instead.

I work at an enormous Fortune 40-level health insurance company. I work in pharmacy strategy consulting. I've been here for over 3 years. The past year has been a difficult one for the company. We didn't hit our earnings targets and revised downward our '24 expectations. No layoffs yet but morale is cratering and everyone is thinking about their next move.

.... A recruiter reached out to me about a job that I might be a good fit for. I agree that it would basically be doing much of what my current boss does. The job is to be a Director of Pharmacy Strategy for a firm. They are a consulting broker who helps large employees plan and bid their health benefits Benefits.

It's 100% remote. They gave a salary range and a bonus %. Does not appear to include any stock options or stock grants.

If I got the top of the range, I'd improve my income by about 20-25%. The firm appears to be large and stable. They started in 2012 and seem like a legit Healthcare benefits consultancy for large employer groups.

What I'm trying to evaluate is if I should try to get the job or not. There's always "better the devil you know than the devil you don't." But it seems like a move up in responsibilities, job title and pay.

Side note: my wife also works for my employer. She been here a dozen years and I've been in for 4. So the idea of de-risking our financial picture by diversifying the sources of our income is also appealing to us.

I know we have lawyers, titans of Industry and some @ho-bo's here too, so send me your thoughts, you prayers, your barbecue recipes.

Please vote and post your reasons. I voted yes and believe it is the overall record in the SEC and our road record that gets them in as an 11 seed.

This is the official game thread. Billy will be there covering for us.

I have been working the phones, DM's and text messages this morning to try to get you the latest on the Jerry Stackhouse situation.

Okay, not really. The truth is that I woke up before 5 and couldn't get back to sleep. But this is evidence you're never far from my mind.

Anyway, a few things:

- Regarding the Robbie Weinstein report last night: I wouldn't discount that, Robbie is good at his job and has sources that probably aren't mine and what he reported may well be/probably is the truth/based in truth. Or the truth for yesterday. It is entirely plausible that you can take it all at face value and that the situation isn't changing.

- However... I spent some time on the phone last night with my best source who still (and admittedly this is opinion) sees it as "50-50." I have constantly hedged my bets and stayed away from predictions for a reason, and it's because Vanderbilt is a crazy/unusual/somewhat unpredictable place. And remember, there has already been noise about Renaissance/talk in the coaching world of a vacancy, and I could well see the school playing both sides or being truly undecided at this point.

- I believe that if they don't move on, it'll be that Diermeier leaves it up to Candice and she genuinely believes he's the right guy for the job, or the contract she has worked him into is cost-prohibitive/could land her in hot water, or even get fired. There are not a lot of things that could get her fired but again, being fiscally irresponsible would be on that list.

- If they stay with keeping Stack, holy cow, it's going to get ugly. There will be mass cancellations of season tickets. I can't imagine there being many people in the gym next year. I wouldn't be shocked if people gave up other tickets/walked away from donations just because of the anger over this.

- Don't forget what happened with Stephanie White, where Candice had publicly announced her retention and then (I'm told) got called on the carpet by Diermeier soon after. It took a few weeks but they rolled that back and what I was told was that inability to retain players got Stephanie in the end. Stack has had similar troubles. The constant bus of people out of the program, combined with what that does to their graduation rate, could be the straw that ends this.

- The correct move would still be to announce a change on Sunday and move quickly to talk to mid-major candidates who have a free week between the end of their conference tournaments and the NCAA Tournament (or are done with their season). So I'm still keeping an eye on that day.

- What Candice has working for her is rapport with the university (again, that could get damaged by a bad contract) and, some think, is doing a respectable job of fund raising. And so there could be some mega-donors who have her back--no matter what. (Although I dont' think that saved Zeppos). But I know the public pressure of the job has really gotten to her. Sources who know her have told me that they think the likelihood of change would be more of her walking away from the job than the school initiating change.

My criticism of Candice has always been professionally-based. I think she has done a good job of sticking up for student-athletes in some spots. When she does not feel threatened/esposed, it allows her better characteristics to shine. I also see her passions based around those things, around Vanderbilt history with Perry Wallace and the things it has done to be on the right side of history in that regard. And the school has gone beyond bending over backwards to shield her from criticism and to promote her publicly for those reasons.

But those aren't things that are primary responsibilities of athletic directors. (well, the fundraising is, but the rest is not.) The reasons it's not working are the same reasons people believed on Day 1 that it wasn't going to work. At some point, if there is doing to be a domino that starts a change whereby one or both parties decides that hey, maybe there is a different arrangement that would work better, it looks like this. I'd bet against it but I don't think it's entirely off the table if they retain Stackhouse.

he is retained, and vu directs massive funding ( say $15M , which would still be far less than a buyout ) into an nil warchest, allowing CJS to purchase a top tier sec team ? stranger things have happened. if said nil funding and subsequent player quality catapulted vu into contender status, would fans forgive and forget, and return to memorial ?

Really interested in the responses here.

If you vote “Yes” and believe ADCSL has displayed any individual instances of “competency” for an NCAA D-1 athletic director, please put your money where your mouth is and detail any specific examples within this thread.

Free, in the infield.