It is important to realize how complicated it is to oversee Vanderbilt athletics.
This is not an easy athletic program to run, and more precisely, this is an athletic program which has long existed within a structure that is unique to Power Five conference programs. The challenges found in Vanderbilt athletics are not — and have not been — the challenges found at most of the other programs in the SEC. Are some problems shared? To a degree, certainly, but the broader outlines of an administrative job at Vanderbilt pose very particular tests to anyone who wants to take on that enormous responsibility.
By Matt Zemek
This leads us to a few very profound points about leadership at Vanderbilt:
First, if a person succeeded in a position of administrative responsibility at Vanderbilt athletics, you know that person called forth a substantial amount of creativity, textured intelligence, and toughness to do the job right.
Second, as much as Vanderbilt fans naturally and rightly want to see more tangible results on the baseball field, the tennis court, the basketball court, and the football field, the missional importance of forming whole persons and being a courageous voice in modern society still matters more than whether the football team wins the SEC East. This in no way diminishes the importance of making football better, or reduces the value of reaching a Men’s Final Four in hoops — not at all. It merely reminds us that championship-level quality and social leadership are twin goals. One should not be sacrificed in service of the other — in either direction.
This is where David Williams, who died at 71 just eight days after leaving his post as Vanderbilt’s vice chancellor and athletic director, emerges as a complete visionary.
Williams will rightly be remembered for presiding over an era in which Vanderbilt won national championships in baseball, women’s tennis, and bowling. He will be remembered as the man whose tenure brought an end to the oppressive 26-year bowl drought (1982-2008) for the football program. He will be remembered as the man who cultivated the football program to the point where it made six bowl games, a bonanza by historical standards. He should be remembered for those reasons. It took a lot of hard work and thoughtful care to improve Vanderbilt in those tangible ways between the painted white lines of gameday competition.
Yet, as this excerpt from Williams’ obituary shows, the imprint he left is far bigger than those immense and properly celebrated on-field achievements:
A hallmark of Williams’ tenure was the expansion of academic and experiential opportunities for student-athletes. Because of his leadership, the university now offers the nation’s most comprehensive summer internship program for student-athletes. In addition, the award-winning Summer Bridge program for incoming first-year athletes was introduced to provide workshops on life and study skills. Vanderbilt student-athletes have earned over a cumulative 3.0 grade-point average every year for the past 13 years.
Under Williams’ direction, the Student Recreation and Wellness Center underwent a major renovation and expansion designed to serve the entire Vanderbilt community. He also oversaw upgrades at Hawkins Field, Brownlee O. Currey Tennis Center and McGugin Center, among other facilities.
During his tenure as athletics director, Williams brought significant attention to sports’ impact on society, underscoring Vanderbilt’s rich and often troubled history during the civil rights movement. He was instrumental in leading efforts for recognition of and reconciliation with Vanderbilt pioneers, including Perry Wallace and Godfrey Dillard, and in educating current students, faculty and staff about the university’s past.
What enabled Williams to possess this two-way vision, this uncommon ability to improve Vanderbilt on and off the field? What gave him the dexterity and awareness he needed to devote his considerable intellectual heft to a full range of initiatives which knitted together this athletic program and university community, situated within the city of Nashville?
Start with the fact that Williams was raised by visionaries. He was the son of a former Tuskegee Airman and a Detroit public school teacher. He taught in Detroit’s public schools. Williams did not have a life soaked in Old Money, the kind of life which leads to a “legacy admission” to an elite academic institution. He did not come from a dynastic political family which was able to pull levers to smooth his path. Williams had to work his way up the ladder in society and earn his place as a professor in the Vanderbilt Law School, en route to becoming vice chancellor. He was able to acquire, in the fullness of time through his range of diverse experiences, an ability to understand both of these essential points, not one at the expense of the other:
Williams understood what it meant to live and move in the highest circles of academic and administrative leadership, and to form relationships with other people in positions of power and influence. Yet, he also knew how to serve large communities of students who are wrestling with life’s struggles as 18-to-21-year-old human beings trying to make sense of a very complicated world.
It should therefore not come as a surprise that when he was asked to share the accomplishment he was most proud of — in his September 11, 2018, resignation press conference — Williams had this to say:
“Out of all the stuff I’ve done, I actually brought Perry Wallace home,” Williams said at the time. “I think that was the most important thing because there was a rift between a person who meant so much to this university and this university, and we needed to step up. And I’m real proud that I was the one that got to retire his jersey and had a part in bringing him home.”
That answer is the kind of answer a visionary — a complete visionary — would give.
David Williams brought Perry Wallace home.
If you are a believer in a loving God, you know that the good Lord has called David Williams home.
It was a fruitful life the Vanderbilt family won’t soon forget. Moreover, his influence on young people will enable David Williams to live for many decades, if not centuries, into the new future he has created for Vanderbilt University.
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