During the SEC media days last month, Robbie Caldwell‘s stand-up set was certified comedy gold by most of those in attendance.
Whether or not that routine had any effect on Vanderbilt’s latest decision regarding the head coach is up for debate, but there’s little doubt it couldn’t have hurt. At all.
According to The Tennessean, Vanderbilt quietly dropped the “interim” tag from Caldwell’s title a couple of weeks ago. The decision came after school officials spent a few days in the wake of Bobby Johnson‘s resignation gathering information regarding Caldwell.
“I think what it says is we see Robbie as our head football coach,” Vice Chancellor David Williams said. “I don’t want to start any speculation one way or the other, but we see him as our head football coach. We’re 100% behind him and his staff.”
While it’s no guarantee that Caldwell will have the job after this year, it does show the amount of respect the coach has earned in the three weeks or so on the job.
“We evaluate every year,” Williams said. “Even if you have a 20-year contract, we’re going to evaluate. We’ll evaluate all of our programs with the sport and what the goals were and the growth. I don’t think anything changes in that whether you’re interim or not interim, or whether you’re Robbie of Bobby.”
Here’s hoping that this is simply the first step toward a long and prosperous coaching tenure -- relatively speaking -- for Caldwell at Vanderbilt. Colorful characters such as Caldwell are a dying breed in college football, and the game could certainly use more -- not less -- of these kinds of people associated with the sport.