Vanderbilt College will eliminate its athletic department in a major shakeup designed to curb the ills of big-time college athletics. Vanderbilt will continue playing intercollegiate sports, but the reorganization merges the departments that control varsity and intramural athletics, putting sports under the central university administration, the school said Tuesday.
"There is a wrong culture in athletics, and I'm declaring war on it," Vanderbilt Chancellor Gordon Gee said at a news conference.
No NCAA sports programs or jobs will be eliminated, but just about everything else will change at a school that has run one of the country's cleanest programs in the last half-century. That includes the elimination of the athletic director position, which Todd Turner has held for seven years.