Derek has done very well with this class. Good group. He  needs to hire a new cornerbacks coach as the guy we recently hired, Todd Lyght,  left to coach at Notre Dame. Really pumped about bball. We still have a shot at the tourney. We’ll really have to play well and win on the road at places like Florida, Alabama. UT and Ole Miss and take care of business at home, but we are playing well right now. The guys have really grown up and they’re playing like veterans even though they are younger guys. They’re 23 games into the season, so they have been through plenty of wars and I like where we are right now. Need to take care of business vs UT at home tonight (9 PM ET/ 8 PM CT SEC Network). Baseball cranks up this weekend vs Santa Clara at home for a weekend series. Friday’s first pitch is at 4 PM CT. Carson will probably get the nod. Walker Buehler has a little bit of an elbow issue, so he might be off for a week, but should be fine the following week. We’re No.1 in every preseason poll, and D1 Baseball.com, which has now become the No.1 authority in college baseball, has already projected us at the No.1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament. A lot of work to do though, with some key non-conference games against top 10 programs on the road vs UCLA and neutral vs TCU at Dodger Stadium. That’s pretty cool. And then we’ll have a powerful SEC to navigate. I believe there are eight SEC teams in the preseason top 25. Will have a more thorough write up tomorrow on the blog.

UT has some good players, so we’ll have to play well tonight. Josh Richardson is their leading scorer at 15.6 per game. Probably will put Roberson on him. Jeff and Wade are probably our best two defenders. Wade may get the assignment some too.

I never try to be negative on the blog, and Franklin did a lot of good stuff, but he also did some bad stuff. He brought in this junior college kid, Brandon Vandenburg, who instigated the whole sexual assault on the girl. The kid was low character and Franklin insisted this hostess program, which may fly at places like Alabama, Auburn and Tennessee, places like that, where football is all that matters, but it shouldn’t happen at Vanderbilt. It’s pretty disturbing what happened. College football needs to get back to a college model and not be so concerned with being a farm system for the NFL. I have some problems with it. The NCAA just told Penn State they were “just kidding” when they originally punished them for the transgressions of Jerry Sandusky, which were horrific crimes. The NCAA gave Penn State back their bowl eligibility and gave Paterno back his wins. The head of the NCAA, Mark Emmert, is a joke. He’s a weak leader and really needs to be replaced. There is no accountability whatsoever for recruiting violations and criminal actions by these players. They need to really tighten up their enforcement and get a new guy in charge, or things may just get out of control with recruiting and this criminal activity by players. Pro football is starting to do something about it, and college football needs to follow suit. I really think Emmert should be fired.

Anyway, I’ll have more tomorrow on the game, Derek’s class and preparations for spring ball. We still have a very young team in football, but these young guys now have been in the SEC wars for a year, and  we should be much improved. Strength coach is a major upgrade, and I like our new OC Ludwig and our wide receivers coach from Harvard. Hopefully, the offensive line will improve. Derek is either working on getting a cornerbacks coach or he will coach them himself.  Derek is a master at defense, and particularly the secondary, so maybe he wants to coach that position as well. That’s a lot for him to do with all of his head coaching responsibilities as well. There’s a guy out at Stanford he may hire.  His name is Marc Mattioli. He could be a good hire. He’s been a graduate assistant at Stanford for four years working with the secondary. He has Southern roots, having played at Rhodes College in Memphis and coached high school ball in Georgia, so I’ll let you know if that transpires.