Commodores celebrate all night long

Vanderbilt's win over Alabama is its first in 40 years and tops an unpredictable Saturday.

Diego Pavia, Vanderbilt quarterback

If not for Homecoming, it was difficult to find a reason why Vanderbilt still plays football.

Well, there’s that plump check the Commodores get for serving as the SEC’s lint screen, but mostly they were the Homecoming game. When the alumni come back for Homecoming, they want to see their friends, have a few pops and watch a football game their school is in no danger of losing. Vanderbilt was the designated victim, the Washington Generals of barbecue country. Since 1959 it has enjoyed two winning seasons in SEC play, and it has not finished in the AP’s final Top 20 since it was 13th in 1948. Red Sanders was the coach then, and six years later he would win the national championship at UCLA. That makes him the real Coach Prime.

The Commodores went through a parade of former NFL and major college coaches, the Widenhofers and DiNardos and Dowhowers, without success. They also hired Bobby Johnson, who wanted to enforce a no-cursing policy on the field. He could not enforce the same discipline among the fans, such as they were, although Johnson did have a 7-6 season in Year 5 of his 8-year tenure.

When the Commodores hired Gerry DiNardo, someone asked why anyone should believe he would be the turnaround agent. “Because I have a plan,” he said.

Nashville Banner columnist Joe Biddle found John Baker, longtime Vanderbilt athletic department employee.

“How many coaches have you seen them hire?” Biddle said.

“Six or seven,” Baker said.

“And how many of them had a plan?”

“Every damn one of ‘em,” Baker replied.

Aside from the excellence of the school, there were few ways to make a recruiting pitch. One was the schedule. Because of the SEC’s divisional setup, Vanderbilt was not required to play Alabama every year. That was merciful. The last three Bama-Vandy scores were 55-3, 59-0 and 34-0. Nick Saban, the Alabama coach who retired last year/ to become America’s latest pundit/comedian, said on Saturday morning that Vanderbilt was never a road game for the Tide, thanks to the thousands that drove up I-65 to Nashville to see the scheduled bloodlettings. Vanderbilt had not beaten Alabama since 1984 – its first and last win in Tuscaloosa – and had beaten Alabama only twice since Bear Bryant began coaching the Tide.

This is a very long way of explaining why Vanderbilt students were carrying cumbersome goalposts through the streets of Music City Saturday night, stopping on Broadway and then throwing them ceremoniously into the Cumberland River. It was not an extra-credit engineering assignment. It was what people do when they see the Rapture. Vanderbilt had beaten Alabama, 40–35, on a day when the Crimson Tide was ranked No. 1 and was coming off a storied victory over Georgia. For a change, the Vandy kids can tell stories about the unimaginable to their grandparents. You went into the woods and caught dinner every afternoon? That’s nothing. I saw the Commodores hold the ball on Alabama for 42 minutes.

No, this was not a matter of ‘Bama’s kicker doinking a field goal off the upright, or some last-second Rube Goldberg play that winds up charging through the marching band. This was straight-up football. Quarterback Diego Pavia hit 16 of 20 passes for 252 yards and ran a constant shell game on the option, continually hitting Alabama defenders where they weren’t. The Commodores converted 12 of 18 third downs and ran 75 plays to Alabama’s 45.

A sweep touchdown by Alabama’s Ryan Williams, who remains the most fascinating freshman in the game since Johnny Manziel, cut Vandy’s lead to 40-35 with 2:44 left. Surely the Tide would find a way to intimidate Pavia, who had transferred from New Mexico State. Instead, Vanderbilt ran out the clock and didn’t even need to cash a third down. The Tide couldn’t tackle Sedrick Alexander and couldn’t find Pavia when he ran for eight yards on a second-and-seven. The Vandy fans stormed the field, of course, while the larger ‘Bama contingent stood there staring. Oh, to have a transcript of those car conversations back to Huntsville and points south.

Alabama’s offense is still a wondrous thing. It’s not easy to score five touchdowns in fewer than 18 minutes of possession time. But the defense has now given up 67 points in its last six quarters.

Worse for new coach Kalen deBoer, the Tide kept committing weird penalties that allowed Vanderbilt to keep the ball. A “numbering penalty” on a punt return, in which two Tide players wore the same number, will be examined closely, as will Que Robinson’s roughing-the-passer call on the same drive that again deprived Alabama of the ball.

And if you’ve been squinting through the binoculars all along, you could see a difference in Vanderbilt. Pavia was a successful QB at New Mexico State. He brought receiver Eli Stowers with him, and Jerry Kill, last year’s NMSU coach, is now an assistant at Vanderbilt. Yilanan Quattara, who recovered the fourth quarter fumble that stunted an Alabama drive, is a 6-foot-7, 311-pound pass rusher from Cologne, Germany. He played for the Cologne Crocodiles before he chose Vanderbilt. Brandon Collier, a former UMass lineman and college assistant coach, has organized PPI, which finds promising European players and brings them to college camps. Vanderbilt has three of those players. None of them know, or care, how bad Vanderbilt is, or was.

It helps to have a coach who knows what he’s getting into, and Clark Lea played at Vanderbilt. The Commodores hired him off Notre Dame’s staff going into the 2021 season. In 2022 Vanderbilt beat Kentucky and Florida. Last year was a step back, but the Commodores opened this year with an overtime win over Virginia Tech. Then came a loss to Georgia State, followed by an overtime loss at Missouri. There will be switchbacks on the way to the top, however Vanderbilt defines it, but for one certified day the Commodores were better than Alabama, and nobody told their fans to act like they’d been there before.

Otherwise:

Arkansas 19, Tennessee 14: The Vols’ undefeated season crashed in the fourth quarter in Fayetteville, when Malachi Singleton ran for an 11-yard touchdown and capped a comeback from 3–14. Singleton replaced injured quarterback Jaylen Green. Tennessee had not trailed all season until it went down 3-0, and Nico Iamaleava was heavily pressured and passed for only 156 yards. Tennessee’s last drive ended when the Razorbacks ran Iamaleava out of bounds on the Arkansas 16-yard-line. In the days of a 4-team playoff, Tennessee and Alabama might be eliminated by Saturday’s losses, but they still live, in the 12-team format.

Miami 39, Cal 38: You win Heisman Trophies by doing spectacular things, and Miami can only hope enough voters stayed up late to watch Cam Ward bring the Hurricanes back from a 38-18 deficit. Ward went 35 for 53 for 437 yards. He got the ball with 1:28 left on Miami’s 8-yard-line and promptly threw to Xavier Restrepo for 77 yards. With :26 left Ward found Elijah Arroyo for a five-yard touchdown. This followed Ward’s own 24-yard touchdown run and an 18-yard scoring pass to Isaiah Horton. Miami is 6-0 and had to survive a 285-yard, two-touchdown passing night by Fernando Mendoza. There are no sure things on anyone’s schedule, but the ‘Canes’ two toughest games might be trips to Louisville this week and Syracuse at season’s end.

SMU 34, Louisville 27: The Mustangs are thriving in their first ACC season and took advantage of penalties to get the game-winning touchdown with six minutes left. Quarterback Kevin Jennings had a 59-yard TD run and hit 21 of 27 passes, and Key’Shawn Smith made a one-handed touchdown catch in the win over the 22nd-ranked team. SMU is 5-1, 2-0 in the league and doesn’t play Clemson or Miami, although undefeated Pittsburgh looms on Nov. 2. SMU also has a 7-game road win streak.

Iowa State 43, Baylor 21: Another stealth playoff contender. The Cyclones are 5-0 and scored the last 24 points of this one, with 10 and 20 yard touchdown runs by Jaylon Jackson. Iowa State has rushed for more than 200 yards in its past three games, and quarterback Rocco Becht has nine TD passes. The defense had given up only 29 points in four games until Saturday. The Cyclones’ chances of reaching the Big 12 title game likely rest on the final two games: Utah at home, and at Kansas State.

Boise State 62, Utah State 30: Heisman dreams are usually foreign to those in the Mountain West Conference, but Ashton Jeanty is overpowering skeptics with sheer numbers. He ran for 186 yards in this one and didn’t play in the second half. He also broke the 1,000 mark in five games, only the eighth FBS player to do it. Jeanty has 36 touchdowns in two and a half seasons for the Broncos, who are 4-1. “When you miss tackles against their offense,” said Utah State coach Nate Dreiling, “it’s going to be a 70 to 80 yard gain against what’s probably the best player in the country.”