NASHVILLE — Vanderbilt University has plenty of options for divvying up revenue among its athletic teams under the plan that goes into effect July 1 and was made possible by the approval of the landmark House v. NCAA lawsuit settlement earlier this month.
After all, the Commodores have a baseball program with two national championships — both within the past dozen seasons — and the school’s men’s and women’s basketball teams both made their respective NCAA Division I tournaments this year. Combined with a football program that has more losing seasons than bowl berths and is tasked with the tall order of trying to catch up in the powerful Southeastern Conference, it seemingly would make for an easy decision about where to invest.
Anywhere but football.
That’s not the plan for the Commodores, though.
“This is the SEC,” Vanderbilt athletic director Candice Storey Lee said Tuesday. “You have to invest, and invest at a high level.”
The decision is tougher with the SEC’s lone private university coming off one of its best all-around athletic school years in some time.
Any single institution can distribute up to $20.5 million across its athletic programs in the coming school year. Lee wouldn’t specify if Vanderbilt will follow the 75-15-5-5 formula that has emerged as a popular revenue-sharing plan that would send 75% of the money to a school’s football program, followed by 15% for men’s basketball, 5% for women’s basketball and the remaining 5% for other sports.
Investing more in football isn’t just the cost of doing business in the SEC. Lee, who was promoted to her current role in May 2020, and Daniel Diermeier, who took over as Vanderbilt’s chancellor in July 2020, lured Notre Dame defensive coordinator Clark Lea away from the Fighting Irish to become head football coach for the Commodores in December 2020 because they wanted to turn Vanderbilt into a consistent winner, something it hasn’t been in decades. Lea is a Nashville native and former Vanderbilt fullback, so the hire had the added value of bringing in someone who understood the challenge.
The following March, the Vandy United Fund launched with a pledged $300 million investment campaign for athletics. The plans included the biggest football stadium renovation in 40 years, with a complete redesign and rebuild of each end zone. The south end zone will be ready when the Commodores open their 2025 season by hosting Charleston Southern on Aug. 30.
All the spending is easier to justify after last season. With transfer quarterback Diego Pavia, the Commodores went 7-6 and earned their first bowl victory since the 2013 season. The season’s highlight was the program’s first win over an AP No. 1-ranked team, with the Commodores never trailing against Alabama last October in Nashville.
Lea said last season’s success is starting to break through the “cynicism” some outsiders hold regarding the Vanderbilt football program.
“We all see the opportunity that we have right now,” Lea said. “… I’m so excited to feel like I have something at stake, to feel like chips are on the table.”
Football wasn’t the only beneficiary of the Vandy United Fund’s intial plans. Vanderbilt Stadium’s north end zone area now features the Huber Center, which opened last fall and provides the men’s and women’s basketball teams each a floor complete with separate practice courts, locker rooms, video rooms and hangout areas for players.
The timing has been perfect on a campus where the women’s soccer program reached the NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16 for the first time last fall and the women’s tennis team hosted an NCAA regional this spring.
The Vanderbilt men’s basketball team went 20-13 this past winter in coach Mark Byington’s debut season, earning the program’s first NCAA tourney berth since 2017.
The women’s basketball program beat in-state rival Tennessee twice in a season (including at the SEC tournament) for the first time, went 22-11 and earned a second straight NCAA tourney berth. And with guard Mikayla Blakes having set records as a freshman in 2024-25 and standout forward Khamil Pierre also set to return, coach Shea Ralph is targeting titles and the program’s first Final Four trip since 1993.
Ralph said she’s glad to be working at Vanderbilt for an athletic director who played basketball at the school. Lee graduated in 2000 after four seasons playing for coach Jim Foster, and she has worked in athletic administration at her alma mater since 2002.
The practice court that was once shared now will be used for women’s volleyball, which will become Vanderbilt’s 17th varsity sport when it debuts in August as the new school year begins.
The facilities in the south end zone area will also have a space that can be used by baseball coach Tim Corbin, whose team won the SEC tournament and was the No. 1 national seed for the NCAA tourney this spring. A training facility in that area will be open to all Vanderbilt athletes.
“It’s clear that we’re trying to, yes, invest where you get the largest return on investment,” Lee said, “but also invest where all of our student-athletes can be positively impacted.”