Save the Shield! A Vanderbilt sports blog

So i was a little wrong about Florida-UCLA.  So be it.
But the fact that the same two immense state universities are contesting the men’s basketball championship as contested the mythical football championship is troubling. Â Again, why exactly do i follow college sports? Â Sure, it’s charming to have the occasional [...]

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That’s sarcastic.  Many years, by now, all the teams I care about are out of it.  This year is worse: Georgetown, whose forum refuses to discipline a poster who wishes ebola on opposing visitors, versus Ohio State, who gets an insane number of calls and only shows up to play half [...]

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I have very little of interest to say about VUMBB right now.  For the umpteenth time i hope Coach Stallings stays, but i suspect his flirtation with Michigan is at the least pretty serious.  Maize ‘n’ Brew like everyone else says it’s probably Beilein. I sure hope they’re right. [...]

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This isn’t going to be a very dense liveblog, but i tuned to Detroit’s main sports station while working. Earlier today they talked about everything under the sun but the U-M coaching search, but when the topic comes up i’ll try to summarize it here.
17:50 ET: I don’t think they have any inside [...]

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Finebaum’s apparent topic of the moment is Nick Saban Sitings. I suspect ol’ Slimy is smart enough to be doing this in an avant-garde, “Who’s putting on whom?” self-referential kind of way. But i don’t know how many of the callers are in on the joke, and how many just think [...]

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Thanks for posting.  I wasn’t clear on whether you intended your post to be publicly viewable or not, so i elected to err on the side of discretion.  If you want your post to be viewable by all, not just me, then say the word.

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A UTK fan asked about expectations for our program.  I replied with the following benchmarks:

“Real” graduation rate (i.e., not the one that screws over programs with transfers): >= 90%
NCAA appearances earned* or offered: >= 40% of seasons. Maybe this is too low, I’ll have to think about it.
NCAA top-4 seed or [...]

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As VU fans get The Walk out of our collective system, attention turns to the next hot issue of the day: Will Kevin Stallings stay or go?
First off, standard disclaimers certainly apply here. And i’ve also tried to start collecting my thoughts on what the guy’s strengths and weaknesses are as coach, [...]

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I see from a link posted by dynamitedore that the SEC presidents are discussing a playoff. I don’t like having to support Florida’s Bernie Machen more than Gordon Gee on this issue, but Bernie’s right and Gordon is wrong.
More to the point, though, i think that taking principled pro-academic stances is laudable, but [...]

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[UPDATE: It looks like everything is settled with no hard feelings. I'm going to leave this post up because it's my very heartfelt perspective on how a site could decide to embargo discussion. I'm happy it appears that everyone is satisfied. And of course VSL should respect the intellectual property represented by Mike's [...]

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