Vanderbilt football’s “we don’t need your permission” tweet - what were they thinking?!?
They were thinking that they handled the situation better than most other schools would handle such a scandal (looking at FSU, Penn State, and other big football schools). The boys currently accused/convicted/unconvicted of rape (not sure what best to call it at this point) were immediately removed from the team and didn’t touch the field. They do not and never did represent the attitudes of Vandy football players or Vandy athletics, and you can ask any VU student that has interacted with our team about the high personal quality of our athletes. As such, I don’t think need to ask permission. They don’t need permission from ESPN rankings, the SEC Network, or anyone else who has written off Vandys chances before the season starts to overcome expectations and win. And they don’t need anyone’s permission to try and drum up some much needed enthusiasm and spirit among the Vandy population. The only people that should be asking permission are those who take an innocent tweet to the worst possible place, then try to shame an entire organization for the actions of a few people.
They were probably thinking that people wouldn’t take their tweet out of context.
Yikes! Agree that whoever is in charge of their social media was not thinking when they tweeted that statement.
That being said, I followed the story of the assault and was impressed with how the university and the football coaches handled it - there was no question in my mind that the Vandy administrators did everything right.
The only other thing the administration should’ve done was keep the dorm room where the crime occurred out of circulation until the trials were over. The ball was really dropped there.