Breaking Down Vanderbilt Football's Media Day Participants: The Anchor
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Three Commodores will represent Vanderbilt next week at SEC Media Days in Atlanta.
Safety Randon Fontenette, cornerback Martel Hight and quarterback Diego Pavia will be the players answering questions along with head coach Clark Lea.
Vanderbilt is coming off a 7-6 season, its best since 2013. Live coverage of SEC Media days will roll through Thursday on SEC Network.
During the 2024-2025 season, the Commodores competed hard against some of the toughest teams in the country, including one of the best wins in school history against No. 1 Alabama last October. In that game Fontenette picked off Crimson Tide quarterback Jalen Milroe and ran it back for a touchdown. Fontenette recorded 73 total stops, including a team-high-tying eight behind the line of scrimmage, in his first season with the Dores, adding eight passes broken up and an interception.
Hight recorded 33 tackles, two interceptions, four passes defended and a forced fumble in his sophomore year in Nashville. He also returned 18 punts for 265 yards, ranking among the national leaders with an average of 14.7 yards per attempt, to be named an honorable mention All-American by Phil Steele and second-team All-SEC, as he enters this season having earned second-team preseason All-SEC recognition as a punt returner from both Athlon and Phil Steele.
Pavia enters the new season as the reigning SEC Newcomer of the Year and the national Newcomer of the Year. He put up 3,094 yards of offense and 28 touchdowns en route to Vanderbilt’s successful season. Pavia was a semifinalist for the Maxwell and Davey O’Brien Awards and was named the MVP of Vanderbilt’s Birmingham Bowl victory over Georgia Tech.
Today’s Commodores Schedule
No games scheduled.
Did You Notice?
Vanderbilt women’s basketball All-American Mikayla Blakes showed up and showed out for Team USA and led the Americans to gold at the 2025 FIBA Women’s AmeriCup. Blakes was named the tournament’s most valuable player with a 27-point performance in a 92-84 win over Brazil in the title game.
This past season, Blakes won the USBWA Tamika Catchimge National Freshman of the Year and SEC Freshman of the Year. She averaged 14 points per game in the FIBA Women’s AmeriCup, the most on Team USA. She also led the team in minutes per game with 22.1 as she added 3.4 rebounds and 2.0 steals to her stats
Countdown to Vanderbilt’s 2025 Football Season Opener
51 days
Commodores Quote of The Day
[To official John Clougherty on the controversial call in the tennis ball game against Florida] “John, I’ve always been a forgiving person, but I don’t think I will ever forgive you for that.'”C.M. Newton
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Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.