Vandy coaches deserve credit

Obviously we're all thinking about the SEC tournament today, but this week's Sports Business Journal has a really interesting article about the Vanderbilt athletic department (or lack thereof).

Besides the novelty of a Vanderbilt exclusive being on the front page of one of sports business' most respected publications, the article brings up a great topic of discussion for Vandy fans. To the outside observer, there would seem to be a correlation between the success of a number of our athletic programs and the restructuring of the department in 2003, but is there really any reason to believe this should be attributed to anything other than pure coincidence?

Has recent success been a result of the esteemed direction of David Williams (not exactly the portrait of inspiration...) under Student Life, or the hard work of coaches that has just so happened to coincide with the restructuring? I tend to think that its the latter, and the success of our baseball and basketball programs (for example) is more reflective of the hard work of Tim Corbin and Kevin Stallings than the department's business model. Give Williams credit for investing to keep coaches in place, but does anyone really think we'd be having this kind of success without them?