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There are several reasons. First, the separate, isolated, and "embarrassing"(Gee's term) athletic department is a creature of financial reality. True, athletic departments have been around for a long time, but the huge, money making monolithic days are relatively recent. At Vanderbilt, however, the athletic department is not profitable, even with the considerable SEC revenue sharing. Why? Vanderbilt offers almost as many athletic scholarships than the big SEC dogs (all programs) and its scholarship costs are many times its SEC brethren. Tuition and room and board for academic year 2002-03 was well north of $30,000 per student. If Vanderbilt carries 85 football players on scholarship, it loses over $2.5 million in tuition and other fees per year -- just for the football team. When you throw the other very considerable operating expenses that are attendant to big time football and combine it with a 40,000 seat stadium that Vanderbilt can't fill, you will see why I think it is very funny when people say Vanderbilt is in the SEC for the money. If Vanderbilt's primary concern about athletics were money, it would have gone the Div. I-AA or the Ivy League route long ago.
You often hear folks say,"90,000 people wouldn't come to watch a math test, so why should the football program subsidize the Math Department?" Well, at Vanderbilt, in a very real sense the Math (and other) Department(s) subsidizes athletics. Therefore, it makes sense -- independent of noble aspirations -- to have the intercollegiate athletics program at Vanderbilt reporting to the same person to whom the rest of the University reports, the Chancellor.
Second, Gee has made many public promises to do something about the miserable state of Vanderbilt football. The symbolism of the recent move is that he is taking personal responsibility for the future of the football and other athletics programs, as promised. This is important to the alumni, and Gee has invested much political capital on this issue. He had to do something dramatic.
Finally, I think Gee means what he says about intercollegiate athletics. It is difficult to dispute seriously his points about the quasi-professional nature of big time athletics and its departure from the university's central mission. Whether anything can be done about it at this point -- particularly by the Vanderbilts of the world -- is very doubtful.
Ultimately, the cynic in me wonders if this was just an elegant way to fire Todd Turner, the AD.
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