Vandy Sports Boss Talks Expansion

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Vanderbilt vice chancellor of athletics David Williams recently sat down for a lengthy chat on SEC expansion with Jeff Lockridge of The Tennessean.  His comments are quite interesting as he discusses the impact of expansion on VU, the (absurd) idea that Vandy might be ousted from the league, and what the league would look for in a 14th school.  (The gist of his answer: there are too many variables to list and he believes the league might spend “a couple of years” with 13 schools.)

He was also asked if the conference shuffle is strictly about getting into new markets for TV purposes.  His response:


“Anytime somebody is going to expand in this day and age, if they can see an upside in TV revenue or TVs being turned on, that will certainly be a consideration of it.  But there are other reasons.  The Big Ten needed a 12th team.  The Pac-10, I think, was a little concerned that they were sort of isolated on that West Coast, and how do we sort of expand and make some noise?  The Big 12 looks like they’re going to try to just throw some times in to stay in business.  Texas A&M comes to us and says, ‘We’d like to come to your conference.  We don’t want to be in the Big 12 anymore.’  And we may see an opportunity to expand or protect our brand.  The ACC obviously gets some television stuff up in the Northeast, but in the same time (they think) this may help us solidify our conference.

Sometimes, if I’m at 10 (schools in a conference) and someone is looking to take me to eight, maybe my best defense is to go on the offense and to go to 12.”


The full interview can be found here.  Good stuff.