"I want to win a national championship” Vanderbilt Football Makes Declarations Like It Rarely Has at SEC Media Day

Clark Lea wasn’t shy about saying it.

Even if he was, his quarterback wouldn’t have let Vanderbilt go down quietly at SEC Media Days. Those two believe that Vanderbilt football can get to a level that others don’t and they’re not afraid to share it. Perhaps it’s unthinkable considering the program’s losing history and the vision Lea blindly had to sell this time a year ago after a 2-10 season, but he and his team believe it.

“We believe we have what it takes to play into January,” Lea said. “We have to support our belief with a discipline, focus in the present. The burden of our goals is knowing we can’t afford to have an off night. We can’t afford to have a lackluster effort or an unfocused snap.”

What Lea said Monday in front of a room of media members wasn’t any new news for his team full of underdogs. When they workout as if they’re entitled to a winning season, they are held accountable by Lea and their standards. When they slip, he slaps them in the face with the reality that they have to be nearly perfect in order to accomplish what they’d like to.

Even with that, his team hasn’t given up the mission. They haven’t forgotten why they’re here.

“Going 7-6 (last year) wasn’t good enough,” Pavia said. “I came back because I want to win a national championship”

Some call it delusional–most have, actually–but Pavia isn’t backing down and neither is Vanderbilt. In fact, its players believe that it doesn’t have to do anything other worldly in order to reach its goals.

They believe that the days of Vanderbilt having to generate a few flukey plays in order to win against good teams are over. Its players believe they just have to be themselves.

“Own the small things,” Vanderbilt corner Martel Hight said when asked what it’s going to take to get to January. “You just have to stay disciplined and have a spirit for the game and that will get us there.”

If anyone’s got spirit for the game, it's Hight’s head coach and quarterback. The latter of which repeatedly said that he didn’t come back to do anything other than win a national championship. The former of which poured out his love for Nashville and his players on the stage while expressing a level of belief in his players that nobody else has.

That’s the only way you can do what this program with history like Vanderbilt’s is setting out to do. You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe in your teammates.

Vanderbilt still has plenty to prove, but it’s got the first step down.

“Our quarterback coming back, that’s big in college football,” Vanderbilt STAR Randon Fontenette said. “With a quarterback like Diego Pavia anything can happen and with the defense we have we can go toe-to-toe with anybody.”

Maybe it results in wins, maybe it doesn’t. But this Vanderbilt team and coach are talking unlike anyone around these parts has talked before in front of a crowd like they talked in front of. It’s the contradictory philosophy to what Vanderbilt has had forever.

It’s always been scared to speak its mind for fear of being smushed by the SEC’s elite. In some ways, it’s developed an identity that way. Vanderbilt’s results haven’t changed drastically enough to say that its past is fully behind it, but for now its mentality is.

“I hope we don’t have to fly under the radar,” Pavia said. “Alabama, Georgia and Texas, those guys don’t have to fly under the radar. They still win. It don’t matter if we’re under the radar or over the radar, you’ve still got to come into Saturday and play.”

Luckily for Pavia, his group won’t have to fly under the radar anymore. Vanderbilt will get everyone’s best. And, it’s okay with that.