History of Vanderbilt Athletics
Vanderbilt is a charter member of the Southeastern Conference and is the conference's only private school. With approximately 6,400 undergraduates, the school is also the smallest in the conference; University of Mississippi, the next smallest, has nearly twice as many undergraduate students. Vanderbilt fields fewer teams than any of its rivals and sometimes lacks the national prominence enjoyed by schools such as the University of Florida or the University of Kentucky. Men's and women's tennis and men's and women's basketball are traditionally Vanderbilt's strongest sports, with the more recently founded women's lacrosse and bowling programs as well as the long-standing men's baseball program experiencing moderate national success. After enjoying success in the first half of the 20th century, the football program struggled through the beginning of the 21st century. In the 2008–09 season, however, the Vanderbilt football team posted a winning season and won its first bowl game in 53 years.
Read more about this topic: Vanderbilt Commodores
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history and/or vanderbilt:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“We must learn which ceremonies may be breached occasionally at our convenience and which ones may never be if we are to live pleasantly with our fellow man.”
—Amy Vanderbilt (1908–1974)