VMI is an old private military school that prides itself on the leaders it prepares for both the military and the business world. Its most famous graduate is Gen. George Marshall, author of the “Marshall Plan” that rebuilt Europe after World War II. It has about 1,200 students, give or take a few future lieutenants.

Vanderbilt is another private school that some of its graduates like to call the “Harvard of the South.” Indeed, it ranked 18th nationally on the most recent U.S. News & World Report listing of the nation’s top universities. Its current enrollment includes about 6,500 future doctors, lawyers, and educators.

Both are known more for academics than athletics, which is especially refreshing in Vandy’s case, considering the Commodores belong to League Jockstrap, otherwise known as the Southeastern Conference.

Believe it or not, Vandy doesn’t have a separate athletics association or even an athletics director, preferring to let its intercollegiate program be run through a vice-president’s office. Can you imagine? College athletics actually being run by the college administration!

So when Vandy’s football team defeated Kentucky 27-20 less than 24 hours after the VMI basketball team had shocked the Wildcats 111-103, it created a fair share of consternation in Wildcat World, where some of the faithful are worried that the athletic department’s budget of “only” $52 million or so puts it at a competitive disadvantage in the race for national championships.

I am not making this up.

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The last time anybody checked, Ohio State led the nation with $104.7 million in athletics revenues, followed by Texas ($97.8 million), Virginia ($92.7 million), Michigan ($85.5 million), Florida ($82.4 million), and Georgia ($79.2 million).

I’m as surprised as you to see Virginia on this list, given the Cavaliers’ indifferent success in football and men’s’ basketball, but at least UVA got its money’s worth against VMI, defeating the Keydets by 10 less than two days after VMI danced out of Rupp Arena after befuddling Billy Clyde Gillispie’s Mildcats.

It was UK’s most embarrassing hoops moment since last season’s team got drilled by… Vanderbilt! You remember that game, right? The Cats got down by 30 – or was it 40? – in the first half. It was the biggest humiliation of the season not known as “Gardner-Webb.”

If the Cats were losing to Vandy in, say, debate or graduate-record exams, it wouldn’t be so bad. After all, Vandy’s academic endowment of $3.48 BILLION leads the SEC and is more than three-times the total for runner-up Alabama. Kentucky, in case you were wondering, is sixth with $831 million.

But it’s rubbing it in a bit, wouldn’t you say, when Vandy also is more than holding its own in football and men’s’ basketball. Somehow it doesn’t seem fair to be smarter not only in the classroom, but also on the gridiron and the hardwood.

If you look at Commonwealth Stadium as a classroom, then the football team got a collective “F” last Saturday night against the ‘Dores, especially in the first half. With UK getting its only first down on a fake punt and its only touchdown on a blocked field goal, Vandy led 24-7 at intermission.

What does that say about the coaches – the team’s professors, if you will? The Commodores were prepared and the Wildcats weren’t. Simple as that. Amazingly, freshman quarterback Randall Cobb was even quoted as saying he thought the Cats took the “Dores too lightly.

How can that possibly be? Given the history of UK football, how can the Wildcats ever take anybody lightly? Back-to-back 8-5 seasons and Music City Bowl wins does not exactly mean that UK has suddenly become Florida or Texas or Southern Cal. As we’ve seen again this season, the Cats can’t even afford to take Middle Tennessee State lightly, much less an SEC foe.

Unfortunately, the same thing now applies to basketball. Back in the day, the Wildcats could bring less than their “A” game to Rupp Arena and still beat their non-conference foes. No more. Last season’s team, Gillispie’s first, went 6-4 in non-conference home games, a big drop from 8-0 in Tubby Smith’s last season.

As bad as the football Cats looked in the first half against Vandy, they were brilliant compared with the hoops Cats’ first half against VMI. The UK offense was abysmal and the defense mysteriously disappeared. Too bad Sherlock Holmes wasn’t in the house instead of Travis and Chavis Holmes, the twins who play for VMI.

Although the Cats fought back to take the lead in the second half, they couldn’t close the deal the way that, say, the LSU football team did the next night against Troy State. Down by 28 to the little-known visitors in the second half, the Tigers tapped into their program’s pride and tradition to pull out the victory.

But not the basketball Cats. Once they got the lead and discovered that VMI wasn’t going to roll over, the way the VMIs of the world are supposed to do in Rupp Arena, UK fell back into its first-half coma.

This was one of those deals where if you had removed both head coaches and just let the teams play, the Wildcats win easy. The gap in talent was that big. But UK came off as being over-coached and uptight while VMI was relaxed and confident.

It was pretty much the same in the first half of the Vandy football game. Vandy’s Randall Cobb – elusive quarterback Chris Nickson – was better than UK’s Randall Cobb. Nickson completed 15 of 27 passes for 155 yards and three TDs.

That’s not bad for a backup (Vandy’s regular QB was injured against Florida the previous week), but it also wasn’t the most charming story of the weekend. Tied for that honor were VMI’s Holmes twins, who combined for 46 points in the basketball game, and Vandy cornerback D.J. Moore, who intercepted two passes but also made his first two career receptions, both for TDs.

At this point in his career, Wildcat football coach Rich Brooks has built up enough credibility to get the benefit of the doubt. Mercifully, the first half against Vandy was an exception, not the rule. One of those things that happen in sports, even to the best teams (see Ole Miss over Florida in football).

But regardless of what the anti-Tubby basketball zealots say to the contrary, the jury is still out on his successor, who still hasn’t signed a contract for reasons that are impossible to understand.

So far Gillispie has distinguished himself mainly by seeking out loopholes in the NCAA rules and exploiting them. He grabbed the attention of his fellow coaches, not to mention the NCAA, by taking a commitment from an eighth-grader, holding “Midnight Madness” a week before the approved date, and recruiting Daniel Orton by repeatedly using his father, an assistant AAU coach, as a speaker and teacher in his basketball camps.

This puts UK on the cutting edge of…what? We’ll have to wait and see. But according to a story in Sunday’s Lexington Herald-Leader, UK Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart approves whole-heartedly of everything Gillispie has done. He even shrugs off the unsigned contract as a minor administrative matter that’s not high on his list of priorities.

Nevertheless, it seems like a strange way to run a corporation. Is there another head football or men’s’ basketball coach in the SEC who’s working without a contract? We must assume that Vandy football coach Bobby Johnson has one, although he may soon be trying to get out of it if Clemson, Inc., or some other athletic corporation comes calling.

If the V programs had ruined the weekend at some other university – Louisville, for example – surely most UK fans would buy into the notion that it’s good to see games being won by universities where academics take precedence over athletics. But it’s another matter when it’s your ox being gored.

In case you were wondering, the hoops Cats play Vandy on Jan. 10 in Rupp Arena and Feb. 17 in Nashville. By then, surely, the team that lost to VMI will have been consigned to the Gardner-Webb recesses of UK’s memory bank.