Vanderbilt Football Has Another Chance To Bolster CFP Rèsumè. Yes, Really; Column

NASHVILLE—Just imagine the scene.

It’s Saturday evening at FirstBank Stadium and Vanderbilt is celebrating a win over No. 15 Missouri on a day that started with the nation’s eyes cast upon Wyatt Lawn and College Gameday spotlighting and ended in victory formation as well as a mild field storming that again signifies how far this thing has come.

If that’s the case, the nation will have no choice but to view this Vanderbilt team as a group that controls its own College Football Playoff destiny. It will have to view it as a team that isn’t going away any time soon.

This Vanderbilt team proves it’s capable of knocking off this Missouri team, its excellent running game and its game-wrecking pass rush and the possibilities are endless. If this Vanderbilt team can do that, why can’t it knock off Texas in Austin or Auburn on this field in a few weeks? Why can’t it run the table?

The good thing for Clark Lea’s group? What it will see Saturday will be a spectacle like no other, but it won’t be anything that it hasn’t seen when it gets on the field. Perhaps Missouri’s running game is stronger than any Vanderbilt has seen to this point and its offensive line will be tested in a way that it hasn’t yet, but it’s already proven it’s able to compete with a team like the one coming into Nashville on Saturday.

That’s not to say it won’t be difficult, but it is to say that Vanderbilt is more than capable if it is effective enough at drowning out everything that doesn’t matter in its chase to win a football game Saturday. It’s been an area of mastery for Lea since his group’s debacle at Georgia State last season, but his group will have to have a stellar level of mental fortitude again.

It appears as if the signs are indicating that it does.

"They've been great,” Lea said in regard to his players drowning out external noise early this week. “It's hard in this world to maintain a laser focus for 24 hours. But the work we put in on Sunday, the work we put on today was very purposeful, very intentional. And I can only measure what I see that way. I'm pleased with how these guys are showing up and I know that it's important to them that we go chase more."

Ever since Lea and this Vanderbilt team got together in January, they’ve had a clear goal in mind. They never wanted to set their goals low enough to where they could become complacent at any point during the eason. If you strive for a national championship, you’ll never be satisfied with the 6-1 record and College Gameday spotlight that this team has on it.

The idea can loom large enough to distract a group from the week-by-week commitment that it has, though. Even if it does, it’s hard to overlook this one.

“I think something we do really well here is just focusing on the next day,” Vanderbilt offensive guard Cade McConnell said. “College Gameday is obviously really cool, it’s a once in a lifetime experience. At the end of the year we’re gonna look up and be really excited that that happened, but as of now we’re really focused on going 1-0 on Saturday.”

Vanderbilt sits as favorites over Missouri, but it’ll have to use everything it has in order to go 1-0. It will have to drown out what Kirk Herbstreit, Pat McAfee and Nick Saban say. It will have to flee from any plausible distraction.

If it does, buckle up. It’s already unlike anything this campus has seen. If this goes to plan, it will be nothing short of chaos.

“It feels like a week long party,” McConnell said, “That ends in a really good party.”