A Magical, Limitless Era Of Vanderbilt Football is Upon Us; Column
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NASHVILLE—With the sun down, the white posterboards seemingly shined through the darkness on Vanderbilt’s Wyatt Lawn, two of them were particularly captivating.
There it was spelled out in the middle of the mob; “We Want Jared Curtis.” The board’s black letters stood out on their own, so did the crossed out Georgia logo and the Vanderbilt logo drawn under it. It was hard to acknowledge that a visual like that could plausibly exist, nonetheless the probability that what the fan wanted has a non-zero chance of coming to fruition.
Walk into Vanderbilt’s FirstBank Stadium in the hours following College Gameday ending its show with four of the five analysts on its panel picking Vanderbilt to win over Missouri and it’s hard to miss a sheet hanging with “Jared, who you with?” inscribed on it in black marker.
Perhaps the wildest part, the No. 1 quarterback in the nation considering this program and landing a recruiting pitch from Nate Bargatze on national tv wasn’t the story of the day.
That belonged to Vanderbilt football’s current roster and the way it knocked off an AP Top 15 team without its best performance. It was the type of performance a College Football Playoff team has to find a way to win through. Some teams that believe they’re of that ilk don’t find a way, but this one did.
A day in which Vanderbilt started with the nation’s spotlight on it, a kicker made a name for himself and Wyatt Lawn was full of a seemingly endless number of Vanderbilt fans ended in it quietly stealing the morning’s thunder with a win that indicated that Clark Lea’s words in regard to the future may be true.
“There’s limitless potential,” Lea said postgame. “We’ve worked really hard and cared about this before anyone else did, but what we’ve built can be sustained and obviously we have all the plans and designs to take it further and it’s important on a day in which our program is being celebrated that we recognize that there are things we need to do to keep pushing this forward.”
Speculate all you want about how this thing is going to shift once Diego Pavia’s and his subsequent Heisman Trophy campaign “#2Turnt,” but this program is more than him. It believes that it can continue onwards once he’s gone, too.
For now it’s pushing all the chips in on 2025, though.
This appears to be the golden window for Lea and this program. It’s relatively healthy–its only significant loss is Yilanan Ouattara, who is out for the season–it appears to be getting all the breaks it needs–as shown by Saturday’s buzzer-beating hail mary falling short and Sedrick Alexander’s goal-line fumble being overturned–and it has confidence that it can take this thing all the way into January.
As a result, it’s evaluating itself that way in the same way that Pavia is evaluating each of his performances in the context of the Heisman Trophy race. The Vanderbilt quarterback was good enough to win–and so was the rest of Vanderbilt’s roster–but he had to do more if he wanted to vault up the leaderboard. That’s okay for now, though. This was a unique test for this Vanderbilt team and it found a way to pass it.
“Championship teams go through games like this,” Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia said. “It’s just how you prevail when you go through those hard times and when you play complimentary football.”
Vanderbilt’s Saturday performance was its third-worst of the season, per Pro Football Focus. It didn’t matter, though. When its offense sputtered, its defense stepped up and made the timely play. This team had its chances to hand over this game, yet it didn’t.
It always appeared to have some sort of magic to pull out of its hat when things got difficult. Few teams can do that, the ones that do always seem to make a run that’s improbable enough to change the landscape of their respective program. Who knows how long this thing goes or where it ends, but it’s the ride of a lifetime for those around this program. It’s the run that they’ll look back on as the glory days.
Saturday was a day in which those same people will remember forever.
It had everything. Photos from before the sun went down will be shared for a lifetime. Videos of the crowd pop after MK Young’s 80-yard touchdown will be rewinded well beyond Young’s playing career. The joy will be nearly palpable to those who were in the building as they reminisce on it. This Vanderbilt team knows it has to go at least 3-1 the rest of the way, but it’s ascending in a way that appears to be reminiscent of a train going downhill.
“I feel the gratitude of being in this moment in all these journeys with this team,” Lea said. “It's important that on a day where our program was celebrated, that we recognized, too, that there are things we need to do to keep pushing this forward, and we will.”
_(1)-b3e453dfe426b2dd4b83a12540ebdb37.jpeg "Joey Dwyer")
Joey Dwyer is the lead writer on Vanderbilt Commodores On SI. He found his first love in college sports at nearby Lipscomb University and decided to make a career of telling its best stories. He got his start doing a Notre Dame basketball podcast from his basement as a 14-year-old during COVID and has since aimed to make that 14-year-old proud. Dwyer has covered Vanderbilt sports for three years and previously worked for 247 Sports and Rivals. He contributes to Seth Davis' Hoops HQ, Southeastern 16 and Mainstreet Nashville.
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