Nashville’s Toby Wilt has significantly influenced local businesses, golf and football worlds over the last several decades. He attended Vanderbilt University on a football scholarship where he played three seasons as a running back. As his football tenure was winding down, Wilt, who played high school golf, decided to try out for the university’s golf team. He helped represent Vanderbilt at the SEC Championships during his senior season.
In 1964, Wilt brought his Bassett Hound named George to school with him. George quickly won favour as the school mascot when the cheerleaders took him on the field that season. During one pre-game against the University of Tennessee, the Vols mascot at the time-the grand champion walking horse-pranced out onto the field. Having never seen a horse, George broke loose from the cheerleaders and ran for the horse, barking. The horse broke his walking-horse stride and galloped off the field.
Vanderbilt beat the Tennessee Vols that day for the second time in more than a decade, and George’s story made Sports Illustrated. After George passed away, a local funeral home had a visitation followed by a burial near the north end zone, the only animal to be buried on campus.
In an effort to give back, Wilt established the Toby S Wilt Athletic Scholarship at Vanderbilt in 1991. Later that year, he co-founded the Golf Club of Tennessee in Kingston Springs, which today is known as one of the most prestigious golf courses in the state.
In 2013, he and Brandt Snedeker, a Wilt Scholarship graduate, won the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am together. Wilt has also served as an official starter on the first tee of the Masters’ Tournament in Augusta, Ga., since 1996. He is a member of the Vanderbilt Athletics Hall of Fame.
Wilt played a significant role in developing the Music City Bowl, serving on its selection committee since inception, and continues in that role today. Professionally, he serves as the president of the TSW Investment Company, the chairman of the Christie Cookie Company and a director of CapStar Bank of Nashville.