Tim Corbin on Vanderbilt baseball offense vs Tennessee
Here’s what Tim Corbin said about Vanderbilt baseball’s offense as the Commodores took game 2 over the Tennessee Vols.
The SEC has rescheduled its premier baseball rivalry weekend, including the UT-Vandy series, for late March 2026.This new schedule places the rivalry games in direct conflict with the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.
Our state’s rivalry between the University of Tennessee and Vanderbilt University gets no more entertaining than when it reaches a baseball diamond.
The annual UT-Vandy series is special, matching power programs with title-winning, celebrity coaches (Vandy’s Tim Corbin and the Vols’ Tony Vitello) and two teams with delightfully contrasting identities and styles, sharing only a genuine dislike for the other side.
I look forward to this baseball weekend as much as any event on our local sports’ calendar. Whether in Nashville or Knoxville, the three games are fascinatingly fun. They are always heated. There’s always drama, and the plot thickens each year, drawing more attention.
Too bad, however, no one notified the Southeastern Conference.
The schedule-makers for the SEC, in evidently oblivious wisdom, have chosen to diminish the importance and visibility of their league’s best baseball rivalries – including UT-Vandy – for no good reason.
Per the 2026 SEC baseball schedule released Sept. 9 by the league office, next season’s UT-Vandy series had been moved from its ideal spot in mid-May, on the regular season’s penultimate weekend, to the final weekend of March.
Know what else is scheduled for the weekend of March 27-29, 2026? Regionals for the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.
That’s the weekend for Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games leading up to the Final Four.
For the SEC to choose these dates (out of 10 possible ones) and hide its so-called “rivalry weekend” in baseball in the shadow of March Madness demonstrated a stunning lack of awareness and foresight by a conference that brags an awful lot about being the nation’s best baseball confererence.
It wasn’t just UT at Vandy. The SEC moved Auburn at Alabama, Mississippi State at Ole Miss and Oklahoma at Texas into that same March 27-29 weekend. Obviously, if any of these eight schools have basketball teams still playing – and surely, some will – then it’ll mean lighter crowds and far less attention paid to a prime baseball weekend that’d be front-and-center otherwise.
Had the SEC subjected Tennessee to this foolishness last season, Vols fans may have had to pick between Game 1 of the Vandy series at Lindsey Nelson Stadium and the Vols’ Sweet 16 win over Kentucky in Indianapolis. Baseball’s Game 2 could’ve been up against the Lady Vols’ Sweet 16 loss, and Game 3 could’ve been against an Elite Eight men’s game against Houston.
And, selfishly, I also know that I likely wouldn’t have been able to witness that tension-filled baseball series in Knoxville, during which I wrote multiple columns to highlight our state’s baseball programs and the unique rivalry they share. I’d have instead been at the basketball regional in Indy. The majority of Vols beat writers would have been at the basketball regional, too.
That’s a shame. Because the attention matters more to a lower-profile sport like baseball, which is still trying to build a larger audience and doesn’t have many opportunities to capture widespread interest.
Fans can still go to the baseball games that weekend, of course, instead of watching basketball. But why would the SEC ever want to make them choose?
I reached out to a spokesman in the league office to ask about the reasoning behind this schedule switch, and I was told, generally, there’s no specific formula for determining the dates of matchups on the 10 weekends that comprise the league’s baseball schedule. Variables are considered, like balancing home and away series (not giving one team too many in a row, for instance) or dates for academic exams or graduation or other facility conflicts.
Still didn’t explain a decision that, from this vantage point, looks like it was made arbitrarily. The SEC could have scheduled any baseball series on those early weekends opposite the basketball tournaments. Why pick the baseball series that mean the most?
Were this done knowingly and for good reason, it still would’ve been a slap in the face for these schools’ baseball programs and their fans.
But if the SEC unwittingly forced this on serious baseball programs like the ones at Tennessee and Vanderbilt, that’s somehow more disrespectful.
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social