Vanderbilt Football's Issa Ouattara Finally Showed Country Who He Really Is, One Of SEC's Most Interesting Players
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TAMPA, FL—It’s stop 11 of the day for Vanderbilt defensive lineman Issa Ouattara, who plops down at the corner table in the ballroom of Tampa’s JW Marriott and waits for questions from the main media room. Ouattara looks up at the TV-esque lighting beaming down on his face and asks if he’s sitting in a good position for the mic to pick up what he’s saying. Before anyone can say anything back to him, he scoots his chair forward towards it.
Maybe Ouattara’s getting the hang of this, after all.
Ouattara isn’t showing it, but this all has to feel like a fever dream. For the last two hours, Ouattara has been brought from station to station by a Vanderbilt public relations staffer and has had to be on socially ever since he put his new, tailored suit on a few hours ago. For the next three or so hours, he’ll have to keep up the pace.
Sick of all of these questions yet?
“No,” Ouattara told Vandy on SI before the chaos of the main media room ensued. “I get different ones every time. At least, in different styles.”
Ouattara admitted to Vanderbilt’s local media contingent a few hours prior that he’s never been “the biggest fan” of getting out and speaking to the media, but he appeared to warm up to the idea by the end of the day. If he hadn’t, at least, he was hiding it well.
There may not have been a player in Tampa with as much depth to him as Ouattara, and he was finally showing it.
While most other conversations had to be confined to football, Ouattara was an easy candidate to talk other things with. He was happy to go into his trip to Japan, his love for cooking, African food, taking pictures to document his travels to his family back home, the challenges his move from France to Germany gave him as a kid and anything other topic that would do this Vanderbilt football renaissance man justice as a person. Ouattara had a fair number of standout football-related quotes, but he was at his best when he played the hits that didn't relate to football.
The only topic that Ouattara admitted he didn’t have much knowledge about was, well, this whole thing. At least, he didn’t used to. Before he became a Vanderbilt football player, he had no idea what SEC Media Days was. He had no idea that people cared this much about something like this.
“I honestly didn’t know what the SEC was until 2019,” Ouattara said. “So, I definitely wasn’t watching this as a kid.”
Seven years, four Vanderbilt football seasons, 48 tackles, four passes defended, 2.5 sacks, a declaration from former Vanderbilt defensive line coach Larry Black that Ouattara had a “97 million-dollar body,” Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea making a similar declaration that Ouattara is an NFL player and a team-captain nomination later, Ouattara gets it.
Ouattara never understood how big of a deal college football–particularly SEC football–was until he experienced it for himself as a player in 2022. He never went to a game as an official visitor throughout the recruiting process despite coming to America as a high schooler. The only way he’d seen college football was through broadcasts.
Don’t mistake Ouattara’s lack of exposure for a lack of intellect, Vanderbilt’s players say, though.
“He’s a smart guy,” Vanderbilt running back Sedrick Alexander said from the other side of the room. “I look up to him a lot.”
Perhaps that’s part of the reason Ouattara was in Tampa despite his lack of a true breakout season to date. He’s as articulate, experienced and insightful of a messenger as this program has outside of Lea at this stage of the build. Ouattara was at the forefront of Vanderbilt expressing its national championship-focused goals on Tuesday. His inclusion appears to be an indicator of more than his speech, though.
Vanderbilt sent a signal of its belief in Ouattara as a potential all-league player by putting him on national radar. Lea appears to be of the belief that Ouattara would’ve been one of the program’s best players in 2025 if he was healthy–and if he was, he would probably be preparing for an NFL training camp rather than learning the weight of a Media Days inclusion.
Lea told Vandy on SI this summer that Ouattara is “the prototypical SEC defensive lineman” in terms of his frame and skillset. What the rest of the league learned Tuesday is that he’s not only that, though. He doesn’t take his opportunity to demonstrate that for granted.
“It’s a great honor to represent my team and that I’ve been chosen to be a representation of our team,” Ouattara said. “It’s been very humbling for them to have picked me. Not the whole team could come here, so being one of those people that represents what we stand for, it’s truly humbling.”
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Joey Dwyer is the lead writer on Vanderbilt Commodores On SI. He found his first love in college sports at nearby Lipscomb University and decided to make a career of telling its best stories. He got his start doing a Notre Dame basketball podcast from his basement as a 14-year-old during COVID and has since aimed to make that 14-year-old proud. Dwyer has covered Vanderbilt sports for three years and previously worked for 247 Sports and Rivals. He contributes to Seth Davis' Hoops HQ, Basket Under Review and Mainstreet Nashville.
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