Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Jordan Rodgers ripped the Vanderbilt football program, where he was a two-year starter, for its treatment of former players on Tuesday, via his Twitter account.
Rodgers has been in Nashville working out and helping to train Vandy players for the NFL Scouting Combine, and Vandy's subsequent pro day event in front of NFL scouts. Having been turned away from Vandy's new indoor football facility multiple times, he wrote, he was later told that as a former player he would have to pay for a membership to the school's rec center in order to gain regular access to the building.
He was none too pleased, and wasn't shy about letting the world hear about it. Rodgers has since deleted the tweets, but they were captured for web immortality by insidevandy.com.
Inevitably, two schools of thought will establish fence sides on Rodgers' whining. The first: "You're an NFL player. Buy the membership. It won't hurt your checkbook nearly as much as your rant has hurt the program you came from." On the other side, Rodgers supporters will note that the fee to be a member is a non-issue -- something Rodgers made clear in one of his tweets -- but rather, the issue is one of a poor Vanderbilt athletics policy.
Then, there is this consideration: New Vanderbilt head coach Derek Mason is barely more than a week on the job. As much as college coaches hit the ground running with cultural changes around their programs and a new way of doing things, Mason's first concern is salvaging a recruiting class that was devastated by the departure of coach James Franklin.
Surely Mason can be forgiven if his policy on access for former players hasn't risen to the top of his list yet. Perhaps Rodgers could have considered that before eviscerating the program.
*Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter **@ChaseGoodbread.*
