Vanderbilt yesterday released its "athletics strategic plan," created during recently resigned AD Malcolm Turner's tenure, and it outlines "priorities and planning for Vanderbilt athletics for the next few years," according to Adam Sparks of the Nashville TENNESSEAN. The school also announced a "fundraising campaign for a 'significant upgrade' to the football locker room, with construction planned to be completed" before the '20 season. Interim AD Candice Storey Lee said that the locker room renovation "will be less" than $5M. No other "specific facility upgrades are mentioned" in the plan. Lee said that she "expects other announcements later this year, but did not provide specifics." Sparks notes the strategic plan "includes five areas of focus: Academic & Personal Development; Athletic Excellence; Stakeholder Engagement; Fan Experience and Financial Performance. Turner had been hired as AD in February '19 to "create and implement the athletics strategic and master facility plans." But he was "forced to resign a month ago, just as the athletics strategic plan was getting ready for release" (Nashville TENNESSEAN, 2/27).
HOLLOW PROPOSAL? In Nashville, Gentry Estes writes at "best, the 'plan' was incomplete, offering little more than fancy jargon and dressed-up, vague ambitions with few substantive ideas for how to accomplish them." At "worst, it was a laughable waste of time and resources for a university that appears to so often want to pinch pennies with athletics." Estes: "It’s not that the document lacked vision. It’s that it lacked specifics. Sorely missing were basics like who, what, why and, especially, when and how. Rhetoric ranged from mostly obvious to occasionally nonsensical" (Nashville TENNESSEAN, 2/27). The Tennessean's Sparks noted this was a "small announcement." Vandy "spent a year trying to develop this,” but it is “something you and I could have written in 15 minutes.” Sparks: “When you spend so much money and so much time and so many resources to develop something that's supposed to push the university ahead, and then you come out with something that just doesn't have much of any substance, to some extent you're insulting your fan base” (“The Paul Finebaum Show,” ESPN Radio, 2/26).
