Look, Chancellor Zeppos. We get it.
We get that Vanderbilt University is a university with a football program, not, to paraphrase VandyImport’s assessment of the other 13 schools in the Southeastern Conference, a football program with a university.
We get that the average Vanderbilt student cares a lot more about having a nice dorm room to crash in than having a nice seat at the football stadium that many of them rarely actually use anyway.
We understand that having a good football team associated with Vanderbilt University will have exactly zero effect on the value of our degrees from the university — but your work to improve the quality of the academic experience at the university and its overall reputation has more than done that.