How Vanderbilt is Bracing For "Meaningful" Tennessee Matchup

With how long as this rivalry has gone, you’d think it would have seen everything in its recent history. As Vanderbilt and Tennessee take the field on Saturday in the regular season finale, they’ll add something to this stage that they haven’t in the past.

Vanderbilt and Tennessee haven’t taken the field while both being ranked since the 1958 season, until Saturday. Clark Lea’s Vanderbilt team is ranked No. 12 in the AP Top 25 while Tennessee is ranked No. 18. If the stakes didn’t already have enough height, the rivalry now has another layer.

“It’s a congratulations to both of us,” Vanderbilt receiver Junior Sherrill said. “We’re putting on for the state of Tennessee. That means a lot to me because I’m from the state of Tennessee. Being able to showcase our talents, like there is talent in the state of Tennessee. That is a pretty big deal to me. I still feel like we should be lower in the rankings, but it is what it is.”

A Saturday win for Vanderbilt would put it firmly in the mix for a College Football Playoff berth when this is all said and done, but Tennessee’s ranking–and the 3.5-point spread that favors the Volunteers–indicates that it will have its hands full on Saturday.

Even without the ranking or the prospect of this thing being a competitive outing, it would mean something to this Vanderbilt program. That’s been tested as this program has fallen to the Volunteers–most recently at home in 2024–in all four of the team’s matchups since Lea’s first season in 2021, but it hasn’t changed with results.

"It means a lot," Lea said of the rivalry. "This game is always meaningful. I'm in this mode where I'm just trying to build a program that punches back, that takes that stage and belongs on that stage. We're getting there. That's meaningful to feel like there's a significance of this game."

The matchups of this rivalry’s past have meant something to Vanderbilt–particularly the one in 2023 that decided whether it would be bowl-eligible or not–but they’ve never meant this much. A Vanderbilt win on Saturday would give it a 10-win regular season for the first time in program history, would allow it to give the College Football Playoff committee a difficult decision as they select the field and could give their quarterback a chance to win the Heisman Trophy. A loss would likely nullify the chances of all three outcomes coming to fruition.

Between what’s at stake, who this is against and the magnitude of this rivalry being intensified by Diego Pavia’s summer comments that indicated that Vanderbilt would soon run the state of Tennessee, this appears to be the biggest game in Vanderbilt’s program history.

“There’s a lot at stake for us,” Vanderbilt EDGE rusher Miles Capers said. “We’ve just got to go out there and execute and do our job so that we can come out with the win.”

Lea says that for this to feel like a rivalry game again–like it did at times in the years leading up to his tenure–Vanderbilt has to hold up its end of the bargain. It hasn’t been ready for all that Josh Heupel’s Tennessee teams have thrown at it during this series.

Now as a 9-2 College Football Playoff contender, it’s got a chance to prove that it is.

“We need to win to feel like we’re doing our part of the rivalry,” Lea said Tuesday. “I haven’t been able to do that since I’ve been here and that’s a testament to the program that they’ve built over there. We’ve taken a little more time to get up on our feet–and there’s a lot of reasons for that–but here we are with a good team, and they have a good team. This is what a rivalry game should feel like.”