Why would Vanderbilt baseball coach Tim Corbin, who has lifted the ‘Dores from bottom-feeders to national prominence in only a few seasons on the job, want to abandon his emerging powerhouse to relaunch a University of Oregon program that last fielded a team in 1981?

Corbin’s bio doesn’t include any references to West Coast connections that would make Oregon an appealing destination for personal reasons. Neither does his Wikipedia entry.

Is it buy low, sell high? The Oregonian newspaper presents a strong case: “Kilkenny and other Oregon officials recently traveled to Nashville, Tenn., to interview Tim Corbin, whose Vanderbilt Commodores team was ranked No. 1 in the nation for much of last season. Corbin, 46, is considered one of the leading candidates for the Ducks’ job, if not the top choice. He is one of the hottest commodities in college baseball coaching. After leading the Commodores to a 54-13 record and to the top of the national rankings — on a team that featured David Price, the college player of the year and No. 1 overall draft pick — Corbin was named Southeastern Conference coach of the year. Before hiring Corbin, Vanderbilt had not made the SEC tournament in a decade.”

Is he looking for an even bigger challenge? If so, maybe Oregon is appealing: “Whoever takes the job will have to overcome a slow start in terms of scholarships. In spring 2009, the Ducks will begin competing with about four to five scholarships. The plan calls for them to build to the full limit — 11.7 scholarships — within four years. ‘I think for any coach that will be a major, major concern,’ Serrano said. ‘Even 11.7 scholarships is tough to manage when rosters reach 30 players. It will be tough to field a competitive team with five scholarships.’ The Irvine program started with 11.7 scholarships; it took six years for the Anteaters to finish second in the Big West Conference and qualify for the College World Series. The challenge in the Pacific-10 Conference, where baseball is the most competitive men’s sport, will be greater.’”

On top of those obstacles, UO allegedly attempted to lure away the coach of Oregon State, its biggest rival and, oh yeah, the two-time defending NCAA champs. (Pat Casey declined, though everyone in Oregon is arguing about whether an offer was really made.)

Maybe Brett Hait with the City Paper is right that VU president Gordon Gee’s departure is making Corbin think twice. Whether Hait is right or wrong, he’s asking the right question: “[C]an Vanderbilt keep Corbin around and maintain the dramatic rise of the baseball program? VU held on to Corbin when Auburn came calling in 2004 and again in 2006 when LSU tried to pry him away.” I’ll be shaking my head in disbelief if Corbin departs Nashville for Oregon after turning down two established SEC programs, but Vanderbilt sure needs to do everything else that it hasn’t already done to try to keep him around.

Have you been keeping up with the search for missing CNET executive James Kim (Kim’s blog)? I subscribe to CNET’s RSS news feed, and I was surprised this week to see articles about a missing person. It turns out that Kim and his family got lost in the Oregon wilderness while hiking over the Thanksgiving weekend. His family has been found, but he is still somewhere in the woods.

Several years ago, I got lost in the woods with my brother and stepsister in East Tennessee. We went hiking a couple of hours before sunset and get disoriented taking an alternate route back to our starting point. We were missing for three or four hours, but it was an eerie and frightening feeling–both for us and the rest of our group who were trying to track us down. The sense of isolation and despair was very real even in just a short time, especially as night fell. We were fortunate to stumble upon a group of Boy Scouts who had made camp for the night deep in the woods, and they had flashlights and enough trail knowledge to get us back to where we parked.

Here’s hoping Kim is discovered soon in good health, and that this turns out merely to be a scary and intriguing story his family tells every now and then.