Column: Vanderbilt Has Earned College Gameday Spotlight, Relevance After 5-0 Start
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NASHVILLE—When the nation wakes up and turns on their TVs on Saturday morning, they won’t have any choice but to hear about this Vanderbilt football team.
There will be signs made in an effort to disparage them. There will be a panel of college football’s most prominent analysts discussing them. Clark Lea’s team will have College Gameday telling their story and bringing the attention it’s all but due as the nation’s No. 16 team. ABC will be when it kicks off, too.
Love them, hate them, or indifferent, everyone will have to hear about this Vanderbilt team, what it’s done and what it looks to do Saturday night in Tuscaloosa, AL. It’s the contradiction to the general idea surrounding this program, which has so often been the irrelevant punching bag in this league.
Those days are no longer, at least for now. Who knows what happens Saturday night and beyond, but no college football fan can avoid knowing what’s happening in Vanderbilt’s matchup with No. 10 Alabama unless they’re trying to.
“This is what you come to the SEC for, big games like this,” Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia said. “Tuscaloosa will be a fun, good time.”
Perhaps the 13.5-point spread doesn’t indicate that the national audience will see a Vanderbilt victory, but they’ll see relevance nonetheless. If it wins, everyone will know. If it gets blown out, everyone will know.
This Vanderbilt team is getting the spotlight that a team in a top 20 matchup should get. It’s had to fight history to get here, but it’s here with an opportunity to show everyone that it belongs and that its 5-0 start is anything but a fluke.
Landing College Gameday is a step towards this team being spotlighted as one of college football’s best stories, but it’s still scratching and clawing for respect. The consensus appears to be that this weekend in Tuscaloosa is Vanderbilt’s coming back to earth moment. It’s that this team is only involved in the circumstances it is because of a weak slate across the sport and the college football cathedral that it will take the field in on Saturday.
Make no mistake, though. This Vanderbilt team has earned this. They did it last year in their turnaround from 2-10 to a team that won a bowl game and pulled a few landscape-changing upsets. They’ve done it again through the first five weeks of the 2025 season, in which it’s demonstrated a more sustainable formula predicated on explosive offense, winning in the margins and forcing more turnovers than it’s forced in the past.
Don’t discount this team’s story and why it’s appealing to a crew like College Gameday’s. It’s one that allows people to believe in themselves and empowers them to drown out external unbelief. It’s one that indicates that no hole is too deep to dig out of.
Those in power within the program could’ve given up on themselves and ran the proverbial ground ball out until their firings after Vanderbilt’s 55-3 loss the last time it visited Bryant Denny Stadium. These ones got up off the mat, changed their blueprint and found players and coaches that had a chip on their shoulder.
As College Gameday looks to pick their feature stories of the week, they’ve got plenty of choices. They could hone in on Pavia and his tireless self belief through moments in which nobody believed he could be where he is today. It could look at Lea and his fight to make Vanderbilt a winner, which many deemed impossible. Perhaps it could take a look down the roster at Bryan Longwell, who has worked to make Auburn pay for pulling his offer on Christmas morning.
The best story for this Vanderbilt team would come if it can make its biggest statement yet with a win in Bryant Denny Stadium. When it beat Alabama last season, Kalen DeBoer’s team could’ve used the excuse that it overlooked Vanderbilt. This year, it has no excuse to think that Vanderbilt isn’t capable of beating it.
It knows Lea’s team is coming and if it doesn’t, everyone in the country will let it hear about it on Saturday. This Vanderbilt team isn’t just looking to play spoiler anymore like it was last season. It has aspirations of its own and has a chance to actualize them.
There appears to be some external belief in the things that the general public has called Pavia and the rest of Vanderbilt’s players crazy for saying. They believe they can win the national championship and instead of immediately dismissing the declaration, College Gameday is considering the idea that they should look into it themselves.
So, bring on the signs. Bring on the environment. Bring on the attention. This Vanderbilt team has done enough to receive it.
Time to see if it can prove that it’s worth it.
_(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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