Guest Post: Vandy Uses Athletics In The Best Way As A Front Porch…

Last Sunday my colleague and I Dave Siroty took a detour away from the NFL, and with the invite from my friend Andrew Maraniss, ended up watching Vanderbilt play North Carolina in of all places the Hammerstein Ballroom in Manhattan. We expected to learn a little, we learned a lot. Dave put the thoughts together in the guest post below. You can find all his information here. Enjoy Dave’s thoughts, and learn a lot about how no one lost…other than the Tar Heels.

Dean Smith said it perfectly, “Athletics is to the university like the front porch is to a home. It is the most visible part, yet certainly not the most important.” Last Sunday, we got to see this play out in a unique way. To celebrate August’s launch of Vanderbilt University’s New York City campus, Vandy athletics brought their women’s volleyball team to play in Manhattan.

This type of activation would be normal in the corporate world. Think of a new product launch where the marketing team utilizes street activation and sampling to raise awareness Or a new hospital opening with marketing debuting free pop-up awareness tents with giveaways and blood pressure screenings around town to promote its services.

But literally allowing an athletic event to raise awareness for a new campus? Simply brilliant! And it took some doing.

Vanderbilt didn’t take the easy way out and schedule, for example, a match against Columbia. Instead, they went full-throttle and brought Vanderbilt athletics to the famed 120-year-old Hammerstein Ballroom.

Playing a block from Madison Square Garden, the Commodores blitzed then-18^th-ranked North Carolina 3-1. A crowd of about 2,000, which included many of the 87 NYC-based students, cheered loudly in the balconies while the “opera boxes” hosted notables including Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier, Assistant Vice Chancellor and head of the NYC campus James Kellerhouse, Athletic Director Candice Storey Lee, and proud alum Willie Geist of NBC News. 

The seed for the NYC event was planted more than a year ago when Kellerhouse had a discussion with women’s volleyball coach Anders Nelson. They talked about the NYC campus, the city being home to the second-largest Vanderbilt alumni base in the nation, and how together they could bring Nashville and athletics to the new students.

That launched intense preparation. An all-in committee, which involved personnel from the University and athletics including marketing, communications, development, volleyball , NIL staff and beyond, began meeting weekly eight months ago. They embodied the term “radical collaboration” that Chancellor Diermeier calls for.

The group wanted to create a spectacle to follow last year’s first-ever Vanderbilt women’s volleyball game where the Commodores beat Belmont at Wyatt Lawn in the heart of the Nashville campus. Therefore a simple match wouldn’t do.

They committee worked to narrow down potential venues using video tours to size up sites. Andrew Maraniss, who has served as the Special Projects Coordinator in Vanderbilt athletics since 2017, was the first to see the Hammerstein Ballroom in person. After his son completed a youth baseball tournament in Cooperstown, they drove to New York to go to a Yankees game and also attended a Knicks watch-party during the NBA Finals at, you guessed it, the Hammerstein Ballroom. The athletic department’s ops and TV teams followed his lead, arranged for the site visit (the match aired on SEC+) and the countdown was on.

Nelson scheduled a match at Boston College last Wednesday allowing his team an extended Northeast trips before they bussed down to Manhattan. He deserves credit for viewing this as much more than a “work trip.”

The team spent 9/11 in the city and learned about the life of Mark Hindy, a Vanderbilt baseball player who perished in the terrorist attack 25 years ago while working for Cantor-Fitzgerald in the Twin Towers.

The travel party next visited the NYC campus on Saturday where they toured the facilities with various alumni and had brunch with the student body. Together they enjoyed a watch party for the Delaware at Vanderbilt football game. The Commodores also got to meet the cast after attending & Juliet on Broadway and celebrated NYC Fashion Week with a Crew Dog NIL deal.

Then game time! And nothing was missing. The match was played on the Commodores shipped home floor with all other equipment and game ammenties courtside. The committee didn’t even forget to pack the mini volleyballs the players tossed during intros or the t-shirts for the mid-match t-shirt toss. The volleyball staff, stat crew, PA announcer Kris Freeman were there while. NYC campus students served as the ball boys and girls.

Fans also received lapel pins celebrating Vandy volleyball in NYC. On the Nashville campus, pins for sporting events are valued. This was a way the NYC students could have their own collectable.

There were in-game videos on the video board above “VANDY” spelled out in bright lights on the stage augmented with hundreds of balloons right next to the DJ booth.

It was a festival.

The school’s first Top 25 win brought Chancellor Diermeier onto the court for the celebration. He has a “red hot” institution that is growing simultaneously with Nashville with an awe-inspiring acceptance rate of 2.8%. Yet he clearly understands it’s Lee’s revamped athletic department is playing an outsized role in bringing the eyeballs.

And their second-year volleyball program rose to the occassion.

A speaker series, job fair, alumni event or likely any other academic-related pursuit couldn’t have welcomed Vanderbilit to NYC like the potential SEC title contending volleyball program did. And the academic side fully understood!

Here is what Kellerhouse said after the match, “The Commodores came away with the win, but just as meaningful was seeing our students, alumni, colleagues and friends come together around the team. The energy, pride and sense of connection in the room were unmistakable…As we continue building Vanderbilt’s presence in New York, moments like this matter. Athletics has a unique way of bringing people together, creating traditions and making a new campus feel connected to the broader Vanderbilt community.”

He and Diermeier had the vision. They recognized the power of athletics. Congrats as well to Lee and Nelson who understood the athletic department’s and team’s role in growing and nurturing the institution.

Together, they defined “the front porch.”

Anchor Down!