"There's a Lot More," Vanderbilt Football Not Soaking in Bowl Eligibility

NASHVILLE—It was the sun coming up in the morning, FirstBank Stadium having a turf playing surface and Vanderbilt having black somewhere on its uniform level of obvious.

This Vanderbilt team was never going to sit there and celebrate just because it found its way into a bowl game. It was never going to act as if six wins and a baseline of bowl eligibility is good enough. Perhaps past Vanderbilt teams would have, but not this one.

“If we end the season with six wins we’re going to be pissed,” Vanderbilt tight end Cole Spence said. “We're trying to go win a national championship. That's our goal for this year.”

Vanderbilt has been clear about its intentions since the spring. It believes that it’s capable of doing everything it says it is. To do it, six wins won’t be near enough. It has to be as sharp as it’s been thus far through its closing stretch that includes Missouri, Auburn, Texas, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Spence and his teammates proved that they’re on the track that leads towards their goals with their Saturday win over No. 10 LSU in which they led the Tigers for the entirety of the last three quarters. When they were done, their students waited the obligatory time before storming the field and rather than their field becoming a glorified mosh pit, it was a ground for family photos and autographs.

Vanderbilt’s players stepped to the podium in the moments following the game without shirts commemorating their accomplishment or music blasting from its locker room like it was after its bowl-clinching victory over Auburn a year ago.

This wasn’t quite business as usual, but it was close.

“This game won't define our season,” Lea said “There's a lot more for this team to accomplish. Tomorrow, we'll shift focus onto Missouri, and that'll be a tough challenge for us, but that is tomorrow's issue.”

Lea says he was aware that Saturday’s win clinched bowl eligibility for his team, but he was never focused on it. It’s his second bowl-eligible season at the helm of this Vanderbilt program, but that won’t be what he’s focused on as he goes to bed on Saturday night.

The vision and mission doesn’t change for Vanderbilt’s head coach. He’s intentionally set his team’s sights higher than doing what it did last season intentionally, he said earlier in the season. He believes his group is better than they were a year ago and he’s treating them as such.

“We have higher goals,” Lea said of bowl eligibility. “It’s not that I don’t want it to sound like I’m not excited about the fact that we’ve secured a postseason bid, but we’re really interested in taking this as far as we can.”

Vanderbilt knocked off LSU 31-24 on Saturday in a game that allowed it to clinch bowl eligibility sooner than it has at any point in the program’s recent history. The attitude towards its win indicates that its quarterback Diego Pavia–who Lea called the “best player in college football”-- has rubbed off and infected everyone in Vanderbilt’s locker room with the attitude he has.

This Vanderbilt team now has a 45.9% chance to make the College Football Playoff, per ESPN’s predictive metric. It’s pushing all its chips in on that possibility despite having the fallback plan of a bowl berth.

“We have bigger plans than just a bowl game,” Vanderbilt defensive end Khordae Sydnor said. “If we just keep attacking, keep practicing hard then we’ll be fine.”

It’s a predictable answer from a program that has become comfortable giving ones like it. It appears as if it won’t stop talking or acting like that anytime soon, either.