re: Our hearts have been ripped from our chests twice now

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If a season involving an unranked team is considered one of the best since joining the SEC then hog fans need a lot therapy.

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Finished ranked 5 out of 30 years. Zero Conference Championships. Division champs 4 times (2 shared).

11 win season 1
10 win season-2
9 win seasons-3

Therapy/alcohol whatever it takes.

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Corbin

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The guy with a scholarship advantage over everyone?

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Arkansas has plenty of options at its disposal as well.

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Allowing players to profit from name and likeness should help. We don't have any pro teams and fans are passionate. We can pay their asses to do commercials for anything and everything.

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Weed mostly. Lots and lots of weed to numb that sting of defeat

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Too real. Got high as a kite after that 9th inning homer.

you now... We did what you said. SEC Championship in the tourney and Season SEC Champs as well.

Nobody else can say that this year... and most others!

And hopefully we build upon this. Thankful for the fun of this year. WSP and on to the future.

I'm going to try and reply to all of the posts at once that in some way are saying "Corbin isn't the best because he has unlimited scholarships and has top receuiting classes every year".

Whether we like it or not, being a great coach isn't just how you manage your team in the game, otherwise Billy Martin would be in the Hall of Fame.

Recruiting and using/manipulating the rules to your advantage are essentially attributes of almost any elite/legendary coach at any level. In any sport. Even McDonnell optimized the rules he had to work with to some degree. Arguing that Corbin does this, IMO, supports his aptitude as a coach rather than undermines it.

dude, just admit you're wrong

I wonder why Corbin has not cashed in on a nice contract elsewhere...

The rules didn't come about until Corbin had been there several years and prior to Vandy beginning to pay for everyone's tuition he was only good but not great and didn't make a CWS until 3 years AFTER Vandy started paying.

Say what you will but Corbin has been playing with different rules than most schools and probably all schools in the SEC, yet we continually evenly compete with them.

Now ask yourself again, what would DVH do with a money/scholarship advantage over the rest of the SEC.

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The rules didn't come about until Corbin had been there several years and prior to Vandy beginning to pay for everyone's tuition he was only good but not great and didn't make a CWS until 3 years AFTER Vandy started paying.

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Prior to Corbin arriving, Vanderbilt had been to the postseason 3 times total, most recently in 1980. Corbin joined in 2003. By 2007 he had the Commodores ranked #1 for the majority of the year, won the SEC, won the SECt (against us in the finals), and had #1 national seed before losing in their regional to Michigan. Corbin took Vanderbilt from a middling program to a nationally relevant in 4 years, and this was 1 year BEFORE the rules changed.

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Now ask yourself again, what would DVH do with a money/scholarship advantage over the rest of the SEC.

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What could Corbin do with the overall facilities and fan support that Arkansas enjoys? There are advantages and disadvantages of every school. It's all about relative magnitude which I'll get to next.

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Say what you will but Corbin has been playing with different rules than most schools and probably all schools in the SEC, yet we continually evenly compete with them.

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There seems to be a gross misunderstanding as to the rules and, specifically, the magnitude in which the rules actually benefit Vanderbilt. The idea that they have "unlimited scholarships" is just factually incorrect.

What the rules do: Although equivalence scholarships can be split out amongst athletes to get to the 11.7, if any of your financial aid is for athletics, than all of your financial aid is counted towards the scholarship limit. If its all non-sports financial aid, none of it counts.

Where Opportunity Vanderbilt comes into play: OV was created in 2008, but not to cater to the rule change from 2007, it was to help aid students post the 2008-GFC. Since Vanderbilt is so expensive for any residency (~$80k) they adjust the available financial aid for everyone that gets in based on what the family can pay to give. Here's the last data piece I've found on the subject. All Ivy League schools do that in some way if you meet certain criteria. The biggest portion of the OV awards are paid for students in the $80-$100k and $100-120k range, which considering the socioeconomic background of many baseball parents, is likely in line with the median family level here.

So let's do the math: Vandy total cost of enrollment a year is ~$80k (I'm assuming all expenses included for the rest of this). The average award given for the income bracket I mentioned is ~$45k, but since endowments by law have to disperse at least 5% per year and the asset classes they're invested in (heavily absolute return and private equity) have performance much better since 2016, let's just for the sake of argument say that they've been able to increase that figure by 15%, so ~$52k.

Post OV, cost of attendance is now ~$28k. There are also various types of other scholarships like HOPE scholarships in Tennessee and NRTA for Arkansas, but for the sake of argument we'll ignore those and just focus on OV.

Arkanasas cost of enrollment is ~$27k for residents and ~$44k for non-residents. If we're just looking at baseball, what OV does is effectively put Vandy on the same level as in-state residents without baseball scholarships, but puts Arkansas at a disadvantage for out-of-state scholarships. We would effectively have to use 0.4 scholarships to get the out-of-state students onto the same line as post-OV Vandy or in-state kids. Some of that is helped by the NRTA stuff that Arkansas does for surrounding states (although the GPA stuff is just as tough as OV).

My point is: It is an advantage for sure, not the "leveling the playing field" that a lot of Vandy fans will sometimes claim. However, its not egregious "unlimited scholarships" that non-Vandy people claim. It puts national recruiting schools like Arkansas that don't have a huge swath of in-state talent at a relative disadvantage to Vandy for families that don't have excessive resources, but its not nearly as bad as many would want you to think.

Also note that all of the above assumes that any baseball player can meet the academic requirements for OV, which if they don't, they have to use baseball scholarships. If said baseball player is not from a great economic situation, it would require 0.45 of a scholarship to get to the cost of enrollment for an out-of-state kid with no scholarship to Arkansas, or ~0.66 to get to instate.

PS: I know someone is going to think "well they can just skirt the rules by helping all players that can maximize the OV payout, regardless if they meet the academic requirements". Do any of you really think that anybody is going to try and push that after the recent college admissions scandal?