Vanderbilt eliminates athletic department

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Vanderbilt 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.

Turner has been offered a job as special assistant to the chancellor for athletic and academic reform, a position in which he would advance "a national agenda for the reform of intercollegiate athletics."

"Let there be no misunderstanding of our intention: Vanderbilt is committed to competing at the highest levels in the Southeastern Conference and the NCAA, but we intend on competing consistent with the values of a world-class university," Gee said.

Vanderbilt's sports programs have had mixed success in recent years.

The football program has lost 18 straight Southeastern Conference games and 27 of its last 28 SEC games. The women's basketball team went to the NCAA regional tournament last year and lost in the second round while the men's basketball team finished 11-18. The men's tennis team was second in the nation.

Vanderbilt's move comes at a time of much debate in college sports about how schools run their programs, and follows numerous scandals across the country.

Gee said the traditional structure for collegiate athletics was "broken."

"At least (Vanderbilt) has a chance for success because it has athletes and academics in the same enterprise," he said.

Last season, Georgia and Fresno State withdrew their men's basketball teams from postseason play because of academic fraud, while St. Bonaventure forfeited two games when players boycotted after a player was declared ineligible.