Vandy advantage?

[Dr. Starcs]

I've heard/seen people mention the advantage Vandy gets in scholarships for baseball.

But I've never understood for sure what they were talking about.

Can someone please clarify?  Thanks

[tkhog]

Vanderbilt is pretty generous with its financial aid. Tim Corbin was quoted as saying, "No player pays full tuition." It's perceived as an advantage because Vandy offers more scholarships and aid than any public school. However, Vandy's cost of attendance is over $60,000, compared with $23,000 at the U of A, so the perceived advantage still puts them at a disadvantage.

[ricepig]

I've heard/seen people mention the advantage Vandy gets in scholarships for baseball.

But I've never understood for sure what they were talking about.

Can someone please clarify?  Thanks

Vandy, like most private schools provides need based scholarships to all students. Baseball players who qualify are eligible just like the rest of the student population. I talked with a parent of a current Vandy player and he told me there was only a few in his son's class that qualified for any money.

[jry04]

Vandy, like most private schools provides need based scholarships to all students. Baseball players who qualify are eligible just like the rest of the student population. I talked with a parent of a current Vandy player and he told me there was only a few in his son's class that qualified for any money.

But those few are a few more than Arkansas. A few in each class can add up to 8-10 on the entire roster. That gives them a HUGE advantage to spend that leftover scholarship money on other recruits.

Yes, some players may end up having larger student loan debt, but that is why you do not see a lot of average baseball players go there. You see guys who are top 10 round picks out of high school skipping the pros to go there, because they know barring injury they will get drafted even higher, while getting a Vandy education and competing for a championship.

I do not know if they still do, but LSU used to be able to offer additional financial aid, too.

[Horsesrus]

If you are familiar with FAFSA and that form's calculated expected family contribution for financial aid to go to college, it is pretty simple.  I assume it is still the same but four years ago when my daughter was applying to colleges Vanderbilt will give scholarships and grants to any student accepted to cover the difference in the full cost of education and a family's expected family contribution.

If a family's FAFSA form generates an expected family contribution of 15,000 and Vandy costs $60,000 per year, the family pays the $15k and Vandy gives the student scholarships and grants (not loans) for $45k.  Thus a baseball player at Vandy whose parents aren't very well off can get academic scholarships and grants for anything above that family's EFC. 

I assume Vandy uses that tool and allocates baseball scholarships to the more well off players and utilizes the academic scholarships and grants to the less well off players.  Large endowment has its privileges.

[GatorHog]

I've always assumed the vandy advantage is at least in part explained by the fact that many of these guys would rather have a vanderbilt degree than a kentucky, georgia, etc. degree.

[Big Nasty 34]

Is this a "new" advantage? Or is coach Corbin just the first to really take advantage of it. Take away the last 5-7 years and they're not exactly a baseball juggernaut.

[bphi11ips]

Is this a "new" advantage? Or is coach Corbin just the first to really take advantage of it. Take away the last 5-7 years and they're not exactly a baseball juggernaut.

Baseball itself has changed.  Vanderbilt benefits from those changes.

[Big Nasty 34]

Baseball itself has changed.  Vanderbilt benefits from those changes.

These sound more like university scholarship changes, but that's just me.

[Razorback7281]

Rice and TCU are both very expensive private schools and I assume do the same thing Vandy does to help in baseball.

[bphi11ips]

These sound more like university scholarship changes, but that's just me.

Non-athletic related subsidies have an impact, no doubt, but it's much more complicated than that.  Unless you're fiftyish or older and experienced (1) America's Game before it completely gave way to football, (2) played baseball yourself at the local level growing up, and (3) have raised children in the modern era of "travel team" vs. "rec ball", you may not personally have the background to understand the socio-economic changes in the game itself.  Here are links to two articles that I believe, together, tell the story about as well as it can be told:

The first link is to an op-ed piece by ESPN Senior Writer Tim Keown:

http://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/page/keown-110823/elite-travel-baseball-basketball-teams-make-youth-sports-industrial-complex

The second is to a study of the ethnic makeup of Major League Baseball from 1947 (the year Jackie Robinson integrated the game) and 2014:

http://sabr.org/bioproj/topic/baseball-demographics-1947-2012

To bridge the gap, I'll provide my own experience.  I was born in 1962 in Little Rock.  I grew up just behind the Rexall Drug that stood for years at the intersection of Mississippi and Cantrell in West Little Rock.  My neighborhood was a bit of a blue-collar development more akin to the lower end homes of Cammack Village than the upscale neighborhoods of The Heights, Foxcroft and Leawood. 

In the early 70's, mothers instructed their kids in my neighborhood during the Summer to go outside and come home at dinner time.  Some mothers even had dinner bells.  We played a LOT of baseball.  And that was the way it was all over the country.  It didn't take much to play baseball.  It was still a blue-collar sport.  "Ghost men" completed the teams.  Five days or so a week, we went to practice or played games for our organized teams in local leagues at Junior Deputy or Lamar Porter.  On the other side of the river, teams played at Burns Park and Sherwood.  Lamar Porter gave us Brooks Robinson.  Junior Deputy produced a guy named Bruce Jenkins who played for the Razorbacks and was SWC Freshman of the Year around 1980 before he died tragically one night at Reservoir Lake.  Sherwood produced Kevin McReynolds.  Pine Bluff and White Hall produced great baseball teams.  No one ever heard of "travel teams" or "rec leagues".  Now those terms are part of baseball lexicon.  The rich kids played with the poor kids back in the day, or they didn't play at all. 

In 2014, savvy upper-income parents with aspirations for their sons' baseball careers coalesce when their sons approach the age of 5 or so and begin forming secret societies called "travel teams".  The Keown article is so accurate I won't go into more detail, but I will say I've seen it up close.  Kids are forced to pitch from the stretch from 50 feet now beginning around the age of 9.  (Little League still uses the old distance of 46 feet through the age of 12; players don't pitch from the stretch.)

Armour and Leavitt don't attempt to explain the numbers in their research, but what we see is somewhat of a bell curve in the rise and fall of African American (read "American" in this instance as "United States") players in Major League Baseball.  My theory is that this phenomenon, along with the steady rise of "Latino" ball players (read this as "Caribbean players of African Descent") ties in with the rise of the success of baseball programs like Vanderbilt, and perhaps TCU and Rice, although Rice has long had a strong baseball program.  First, baseball players who play a lot of baseball as young children are more likely to develop into players capable of playing at the major league level.  Where do Caribbean players get their experience?  Largely the same place my generation got theirs - on the playgrounds and in local leagues.  Where do American children get their experience?  In expensive, exclusive travel teams where development is controlled and supervised carefully by upper income parents who can afford the expense of outfitting and traveling with their children and provide private instruction over and above the paid coaches developing the "elite" teams.

Is this good or bad?  I don't know.  An orthopedic surgeon may have an opinion.  What I do believe is that the parents of these privileged year-round baseball players prefer the status and long-term value of a Vanderbilt or Rice education to a land grant school like Arkansas.  And they can often pay for it, with or without a scholarship.  Vanderbilt's elite status fits the mind-set and the goals these parents set out with when they joined the secret societies when their child was 5.

A lot more could be said, but most of you are the TLDR crowd anyway.  Plus, it's been said before over and over.  Just Google "travel team baseball critics" and wade through the articles if you have any interest.           

[ricepig]

It comes down to the money they can provide them, outside of their 11.7 baseball scholarships. From my understanding in the softball coaching hire thread, we(UofA), don't have the ability to give a kid who scores a 28/29 on the ACT even the same money as Bama, OM, or MSU. I just know what one of my children attending the UofA got for a 30, 4 years later it took a 32 score by the next one. In talking with a parent with a player at Vandy, they got no money, and a partial scholarship.

[lowandaway]

Non-athletic related subsidies have an impact, no doubt, but it's much more complicated than that.  Unless you're fiftyish or older and experienced (1) America's Game before it completely gave way to football, (2) played baseball yourself at the local level growing up, and (3) have raised children in the modern era of "travel team" vs. "rec ball", you may not personally have the background to understand the socio-economic changes in the game itself.  Here are links to two articles that I believe, together, tell the story about as well as it can be told:

The first link is to an op-ed piece by ESPN Senior Writer Tim Keown:

http://espn.go.com/espn/commentary/story/_/page/keown-110823/elite-travel-baseball-basketball-teams-make-youth-sports-industrial-complex

The second is to a study of the ethnic makeup of Major League Baseball from 1947 (the year Jackie Robinson integrated the game) and 2014:

http://sabr.org/bioproj/topic/baseball-demographics-1947-2012

To bridge the gap, I'll provide my own experience.  I was born in 1962 in Little Rock.  I grew up just behind the Rexall Drug that stood for years at the intersection of Mississippi and Cantrell in West Little Rock.  My neighborhood was a bit of a blue-collar development more akin to the lower end homes of Cammack Village than the upscale neighborhoods of The Heights, Foxcroft and Leawood. 

In the early 70's, mothers instructed their kids in my neighborhood during the Summer to go outside and come home at dinner time.  Some mothers even had dinner bells.  We played a LOT of baseball.  And that was the way it was all over the country.  It didn't take much to play baseball.  It was still a blue-collar sport.  "Ghost men" completed the teams.  Five days or so a week, we went to practice or played games for our organized teams in local leagues at Junior Deputy or Lamar Porter.  On the other side of the river, teams played at Burns Park and Sherwood.  Lamar Porter gave us Brooks Robinson.  Junior Deputy produced a guy named Bruce Jenkins who played for the Razorbacks and was SWC Freshman of the Year around 1980 before he died tragically one night at Reservoir Lake.  Sherwood produced Kevin McReynolds.  Pine Bluff and White Hall produced great baseball teams.  No one ever heard of "travel teams" or "rec leagues".  Now those terms are part of baseball lexicon.  The rich kids played with the poor kids back in the day, or they didn't play at all. 

In 2014, savvy upper-income parents with aspirations for their sons' baseball careers coalesce when their sons approach the age of 5 or so and begin forming secret societies called "travel teams".  The Keown article is so accurate I won't go into more detail, but I will say I've seen it up close.  Kids are forced to pitch from the stretch from 50 feet now beginning around the age of 9.  (Little League still uses the old distance of 46 feet through the age of 12; players don't pitch from the stretch.)

Armour and Leavitt don't attempt to explain the numbers in their research, but what we see is somewhat of a bell curve in the rise and fall of African American (read "American" in this instance as "United States") players in Major League Baseball.  My theory is that this phenomenon, along with the steady rise of "Latino" ball players (read this as "Caribbean players of African Descent") ties in with the rise of the success of baseball programs like Vanderbilt, and perhaps TCU and Rice, although Rice has long had a strong baseball program.  First, baseball players who play a lot of baseball as young children are more likely to develop into players capable of playing at the major league level.  Where do Caribbean players get their experience?  Largely the same place my generation got theirs - on the playgrounds and in local leagues.  Where do American children get their experience?  In expensive, exclusive travel teams where development is controlled and supervised carefully by upper income parents who can afford the expense of outfitting and traveling with their children and provide private instruction over and above the paid coaches developing the "elite" teams.

Is this good or bad?  I don't know.  An orthopedic surgeon may have an opinion.  What I do believe is that the parents of these privileged year-round baseball players prefer the status and long-term value of a Vanderbilt or Rice education to a land grant school like Arkansas.  And they can often pay for it, with or without a scholarship.  Vanderbilt's elite status fits the mind-set and the goals these parents set out with when they joined the secret societies when their child was 5.

A lot more could be said, but most of you are the TLDR crowd anyway.  Plus, it's been said before over and over.  Just Google "travel team baseball critics" and wade through the articles if you have any interest.         

I agree that many kids at very young ages are playing travel ball, but I don't think that's unique to upper-income families.  Many small towns in Arkansas (Wynne, Vilonia, Ozark, Greenbrier, Monticello, Star City and many more) have USSSA teams and I can assure you that most of the players' families aren't well off.  I think some families are more willing to fund Junior's dream (or the parents' dream) of playing in the MLB independent of their income.  I would also bet that the vast majority of baseball players at D1 schools played travel ball whether they go to a public school or a private school.  And the majority come from middle, not upper-income families including those at schools like Rice and Vanderbilt.   

I agree that playing travel ball at an early age is often misguided.  Obviously, it's the parents who make that decision, not the kids.  I guess if that's the only choice you have in your town, that may be what you have to do, but the vast majority of families will end up spending a lot more money playing travel ball than they will ever see in scholarship money.  It is unfortunate that families feel that their kids have to play travel ball to get a scholarship but I think it's just a sign of the times.  It's obviously happening in other sports too.

A kid I know who plays at one of these elite schools never joined a "secret society".  He just played at his local park from Tee-ball all the way through Babe Ruth and only played All stars every other summer even though the family was upper-income.  And I can assure you that most families with kids (athletes or not) at private schools could not afford, or would opt for a more affordable school, without need-based or athletic scholarship money.

Lastly, I would suggest that the success of an athletic program rests largely with the coach and their ability to recruit elite athletes.  A Vanderbilt degree didn't just suddenly become more attractive when Corbin showed up.  Vanderbilt baseball stunk before he got there even though the scholarship money was the same.  Same with Coach K at
Duke and Nick Sabin at Alabama.  Whatever those schools had to offer didn't result in successful athletic programs until the right coach came along.  Every school has a selling point and I don't fault a school like Vanderbilt or Rice or Duke for hyping their academics.  If you think that the majority of the kids who play baseball in college, much less at a private school, are from upper-income families, you're mistaken.

[bphi11ips]

I agree that many kids at very young ages are playing travel ball, but I don't think that's unique to upper-income families.  Many small towns in Arkansas (Wynne, Vilonia, Ozark, Greenbrier, Monticello, Star City and many more) have USSSA teams and I can assure you that most of the players' families aren't well off.  I think some families are more willing to fund Junior's dream (or the parents' dream) of playing in the MLB independent of their income.  I would also bet that the vast majority of baseball players at D1 schools played travel ball whether they go to a public school or a private school.  And the majority come from middle, not upper-income families including those at schools like Rice and Vanderbilt.  I think it's just a sign of the times. 

I agree that playing travel ball at an early age is often misguided.  Obviously, it's the parents who make that decision, not the kids.  I guess if that's the only choice you have in your town, that may be what you have to do, but the vast majority of families will end up spending a lot more money playing travel ball than they will ever see in scholarship money.  It is unfortunate that families feel that their kids have to play travel ball to get a scholarship but I think it's just a sign of the times.  It's obviously happening in other sports too.

A kid I know who plays at one of these elite schools never joined a "secret society".  He just played at his local park from Tee-ball all the way through Babe Ruth and only played All stars every other summer even though the family was upper-income.  And I can assure you that most families with kids (athletes or not) at private schools could not afford, or would opt for a more affordable school, without need-based or athletic scholarship money.

Lastly, I would suggest that the success of an athletic program rests largely with the coach and their ability to recruit elite athletes.  A Vanderbilt degree didn't just suddenly become more attractive when Corbin showed up.  Vanderbilt baseball stunk before he got there even though the scholarship money was the same.  Same with Coach K at
Duke and Nick Sabin at Alabama.  Whatever those schools had to offer didn't result in successful athletic programs until the right coach came along.  Every school has a selling point and I don't fault a school like Vanderbilt or Rice or Duke for hyping their academics.  If you think that the majority of the kids who play baseball in college, much less at a private school, are from upper-income families, you're mistaken.

You make some good points.  Coaching has a lot to do with it.  You acknowledge the times are changing, and Vanderbilt fits the direction of those times. 

If a family can afford travel ball, they are at least middle-class on a nationwide scale. 

I live in Nashville and can assure you that many of the Vanderbilt players can afford to go to school there without a scholarship. 

[lowandaway]

I don't disagree with your last statement, but I would argue that even families that might be able to afford $60,000 per year are not going to pay full sticker price when they can go to a place like Arkansas or LSU and get a fabulous education for a lot less money and still play elite baseball.  Families that don't qualify for need-based scholarships are going to get athletic money. 

As I stated in my previous post, most players are drawn to a program due to the coaching staff and the athletic facilities above and beyond whatever academics are offered.  That's why you don't see a lot of elite baseball programs at Ivy League schools.  If a kid is good enough to play at Vanderbilt, they're surely good enough to play at a lot of other schools that are much less expensive. 

And let's be honest.  The primary objective of joining one of these so-called "secret societies" and playing travel ball for 13 years and going to Vanderbilt is probably not to become a lawyer or a doctor.  Pursuing the dream of playing professional baseball is clearly the primary goal for most of these kids (and/or their parents) so they're going to go wherever they feel they have the best chance to accomplish that. 

[razCzar]

This is a very interesting topic, which led me to re-read the more in-depth discussion on the matter of one year ago.  Here is the thread link for a refresher -   
http://www.hogville.net/yabbse/index.php?topic=569505.0

Kudos to all contributors in both discussions.

[PorkRyan]

It's easy to blame the wealthy than it is to dig into facts.  The reality is that most African Americans don't care for baseball, they prefer basketball.  People want to use the excuse of travel baseball killing off the opportunities for African Americans to play baseball, yet almost all of the good African American athletes are playing travel basketball 8 months out of the year.  They can afford AAU or MAYB basketball, but they can't afford travel baseball?  Most travel baseball families are middle class at best.  Most of those families would rather spend money watching their kids play baseball than they would on anything else, so they make sacrifices.  There are a lot of teams out there that will pay for a kid to play baseball if he can't afford it.  The reality is that a lot of kids, both white and black, find baseball boring.   

My son has been playing travel ball since he was 8, he is now 13.  It has been great for him.  He has met a ton of kids from the region and beyond.  He has seen 13u pitchers that would start for many high schools.  While everyone wants to blame travel ball, it is also one of the reasons that these 18-22 year olds are so polished. 

I don't view the travel ball expense as an investment.  I have no aspirations of my son playing baseball or any other sport past the current season.  That is his call.  As long as he wants to play, I will help him in any way I can. 

One other misnomer about travel baseball is that they all play year round.  Our team is full of 2-4 sport athletes and we start practicing in January and the season ended today.  The season runs for 3 1/2 months.  Some teams will play 3-4 Fall tournaments but that is very light and most teams don't even practice.  There are only a handful of teams in So Cal, Atlanta, Florida, Houston type areas that play year round baseball. 

[SPAL]

I really don't have a problem with the vandy advantage. To go to school there, the tuition is likely triple the cost of a state school. Larger, instate schools typically have in state grants to lessen the cost.

I'm all for kids going to college and getting top notch educations. Let's try to remember that the student part is the most important part. If baseball opens the door for tomorrows surgeons, physicists, and lawyers, I'm all for it.

But I think that coach Corbin has as much or more to do with the Vanderbilt success than anything else. Arkansas is right there with vandy. A couple of different outcomes in a couple of different years and we might be talking about Arkansas winning it all. We did take 2/3 from them a year ago.

[bphi11ips]

It's easy to blame the wealthy than it is to dig into facts.  The reality is that most African Americans don't care for baseball, they prefer basketball.  People want to use the excuse of travel baseball killing off the opportunities for African Americans to play baseball, yet almost all of the good African American athletes are playing travel basketball 8 months out of the year.  They can afford AAU or MAYB basketball, but they can't afford travel baseball?  Most travel baseball families are middle class at best.  Most of those families would rather spend money watching their kids play baseball than they would on anything else, so they make sacrifices.  There are a lot of teams out there that will pay for a kid to play baseball if he can't afford it.  The reality is that a lot of kids, both white and black, find baseball boring.   

My son has been playing travel ball since he was 8, he is now 13.  It has been great for him.  He has met a ton of kids from the region and beyond.  He has seen 13u pitchers that would start for many high schools.  While everyone wants to blame travel ball, it is also one of the reasons that these 18-22 year olds are so polished. 

I don't view the travel ball expense as an investment.  I have no aspirations of my son playing baseball or any other sport past the current season.  That is his call.  As long as he wants to play, I will help him in any way I can. 

One other misnomer about travel baseball is that they all play year round.  Our team is full of 2-4 sport athletes and we start practicing in January and the season ended today.  The season runs for 3 1/2 months.  Some teams will play 3-4 Fall tournaments but that is very light and most teams don't even practice.  There are only a handful of teams in So Cal, Atlanta, Florida, Houston type areas that play year round baseball. 

Your opinion is that African Americans don't like baseball?  Where are the facts to support this?  Try taking a look at the facts in the article I posted.  What is the difference between Caribbean and US African descendants?  Take a trip to the Dominican Republic.  Genetically, not much.

Is your son playing Fall ball?  Does he have a trainer or a private coach?  Year round baseball is comprised of two or more seasons, often several teams, private instruction, and training. 

The point is that the ethnic/economic makeup of baseball has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades, and those changes inure to the benefit of elite academic institutions with strong athletic programs like Vanderbilt.

[PorkRyan]

Chris Rock did a piece about how uncool baseball is and how blacks aren't interested.  There are a few other recent articles that I will track down that says the same thing.  The big problem in baseball is that it overlaps with travel basketball.  Travel basketball is an 8-9 month sport.  It is almost impossible to do both and African American kids gravitate towards basketball.  My son played some youth football tournaments a few years back and we tried to pick up some of the athletes for our baseball team, none of them were interested.  Last year we offered a free spot to a kid that had moved here from Houston.  Didn't want to play.  You can look on baseball fever and find tons of other coaches saying the same thing. 

My kid does not play fall baseball, he doesn't have a personal trainer, and he doesn't do private baseball lessons and he still plays at the highest level of travel ball.  Not a single kid on our team does any of those either.  He has a QB coach for football that we meet up with about every other week.  He won't pick up a bat or glove again until January unless it is to play in a coed softball or some other fun tournament. 

[bphi11ips]

Chris Rock did a piece about how uncool baseball is and how blacks aren't interested.  There are a few other recent articles that I will track down that says the same thing.  The big problem in baseball is that it overlaps with travel basketball.  Travel basketball is an 8-9 month sport.  It is almost impossible to do both and African American kids gravitate towards basketball.  My son played some youth football tournaments a few years back and we tried to pick up some of the athletes for our baseball team, none of them were interested.  Last year we offered a free spot to a kid that had moved here from Houston.  Didn't want to play.  You can look on baseball fever and find tons of other coaches saying the same thing. 

My kid does not play fall baseball, he doesn't have a personal trainer, and he doesn't do private baseball lessons and he still plays at the highest level of travel ball.  Not a single kid on our team does any of those either.  He has a QB coach for football that we meet up with about every other week.  He won't pick up a bat or glove again until January unless it is to play in a coed softball or some other fun tournament. 

Chris Rock's schtick is making fun of white people.  Baseball is now a white man's sport.  I get that, and that is precisely the point. The reasons are multiple, complex, and if examined in depth, controversial.  An interesting topic beyond the scope of this forum.

You're a wise father to encourage your son to play multiple sports.  Nonetheless, there are many kids playing year round baseball.

[PorkRyan]

The reasons are multiple, complex, and if examined in depth, controversial.  An interesting topic beyond the scope of this forum.

It really is.  We have had some great discussions about this topic on some of the large baseball message boards.  My personal take is that it is easier for most people (journalists) to place blame on a certain group than it is to actually do some research and figure out the heart of the problem.  Blaming rich white people for why African Americans aren't playing baseball sells a lot better than the other possible headlines. 

Chris Rock is a comedian, but at the same time I think he makes some interesting points and he is a diehard baseball fan. 

[bphi11ips]

I don't think the blame is focused as much on rich white people as it is on the expense of intense development of baseball players from an early age, coupled with the comparative economic disadvantage of African Americans as a group.  But even this isn't the real reason black Americans have migrated to basketball while white Americans have adopted baseball as a primary sport for youngsters. 

If you peel it back to the raw, controversial root, black Americans, as a group, have the greatest comparative advantage physically in basketball, while white Americans can best compete athletically in baseball, where fielding, throwing and hitting skills must be developed over time.  Michael Jordan said the hardest thing to do in sports is hit a baseball.  People of African descent still have a competitive advantage in baseball where explosiveness is preferred when skills are equal.  This is the reason for the steady rise in Caribbean players in the major leagues.  They are filling the void left by the reduction in black American players.  As the statistical study points out, these Caribbean players are employed primarily in the field.  My observation based on my own straw poll is that these players make up the highest ratio in the outfield. 

We spend a lot of time in this country trying to reconcile the notion that all men are created equal with the reality that all men are not when it comes to athletics.  As a matter of law, all men must be created equal, but God doesn't appear to have considered this when it comes to the way He built us. 

[Sueie]

In 2014, savvy upper-income parents with aspirations for their sons' baseball careers coalesce when their sons approach the age of 5 or so and begin forming secret societies called "travel teams..........................................................................................

You are about 15 years to late. 
Mine started playing in 1999.  Glad he did because no way could I have hauled him all over the country with gas prices like they are now.  During that time there were only about 3 teams in Arkansas that were any good.

Arkansas Titans (Chris Oliver)
Ft Smith All Stars (Tyler Spoon)
Bryant Braves

If there was a tournament being played. One of those 3 teams would win it.

[bphi11ips]

In 2014, savvy upper-income parents with aspirations for their sons' baseball careers coalesce when their sons approach the age of 5 or so and begin forming secret societies called "travel teams..........................................................................................

You are about 15 years to late. 
Mine started playing in 1999.  Glad he did because no way could I have hauled him all over the country with gas prices like they are now.  During that time there were only about 3 teams in Arkansas that were any good.

Arkansas Titans (Chris Oliver)
Ft Smith All Stars (Tyler Spoon)
Bryant Braves

If there was a tournament being played. One of those 3 teams would win it.

Ha.  Yeah.  I meant 2015.  This didn't start last year.  Maybe you didn't pick up what I was throwing down - things have changed over the last 40 years. 

[Maddhog]

The VandyNerds are up 5-0 in game one of the championship series. Late inning

[Vandyhog4]

I really don't have a problem with the vandy advantage. To go to school there, the tuition is likely triple the cost of a state school. Larger, instate schools typically have in state grants to lessen the cost.

I'm all for kids going to college and getting top notch educations. Let's try to remember that the student part is the most important part. If baseball opens the door for tomorrows surgeons, physicists, and lawyers, I'm all for it.

But I think that coach Corbin has as much or more to do with the Vanderbilt success than anything else. Arkansas is right there with vandy. A couple of different outcomes in a couple of different years and we might be talking about Arkansas winning it all. We did take 2/3 from them a year ago.

Hit the nail on the head here. In my view any advantage begins and ends with Corbin. He literally built the program from almost nothing. He inherited some talent when he took over, but he recruits at an elite level, and he recruits very special athletes.  Through his efforts, the University has made a commitment to the baseball program with continued facility upgrades. The University's ability to provide additional financial aid to defray the cost of attendance certainly helps. 

Regarding the socioeconomic issues as they relate directly to Vanderbilt, Corbin has publicly stated that he wants (and does) recruit kids from diverse backgrounds. He has also effectively recruited kids from the northeast.  While a gross generalization, these are kids who seem to value the educational opportunities at Vanderbilt while playing in the best baseball conference in the country.

[bphi11ips]

He has also effectively recruited kids from the northeast.  While a gross generalization, these are kids who seem to value the educational opportunities at Vanderbilt while playing in the best baseball conference in the country.

No doubt that Corbin is a major factor.  He's the coach, so he's the most important factor.  I disagree that it "begins and ends with him".  Both Corbin and Vanderbilt understand the value of the Vanderbilt brand.  You described it well above - elite education plus the best competition in the country. Vanderbilt hammers that point home in commercials currently running during the CWS. 

And you are correct about the way the brand plays in the northeast, where elite education has been a way of life for the upper class for centuries.  Vanderbilt has been the "it" school where elite education and baseball are concerned for a while now.  About 5 years ago I did some business with an executive for a major publishing house in NYC.  Her son is a very good baseball player.  He tried hard to attract Vandy's attention.  I did what I could to help, not that I have any influence.  Her son ultimately signed with a similar school academically but well below Vanderbilt on the baseball scale.  She could have easily paid full boat and would have if Vandy would have taken her son. 

I'll say one more thing about the way baseball has changed over the years.  College baseball is so much better than it was 40 years ago that there is really no comparison.  Back then, serious baseball players with aspirations to play in the majors usually went straight from high school to somewhere like St. Petersburg.  Baseball was exactly the opposite of football and basketball, where players were never drafted until after they graduated from college.  Today, the tables have turned almost entirely.  Football and basketball (basketball especially) are cannibalized by the draft, and the best baseball players are paying their dues and attracting major league attention in college.  I realize that's not true in every case, and some elite players find it impossible to turn down the big bonus money out of high school, but by-and-large, the college game at the highest level is now on par with good minor league ball, especially where pitching is concerned.  I'm not sure that Vanderbilt wouldn't beat the Nashville Sounds in a three game series.