Vanderbilt Gets The Victory Everyone Needed

Trey Ellis

Making a bowl game can never be taken for granted at Vanderbilt. The program hasn’t arrived at a point where bowls are attained with unceasing annual regularity. It would be great to reach that level of stability. It is important to make the attempt. Yet, realism and sober, clearheaded truth-telling will not pretend to claim that Vanderbilt should automatically make bowl games without fail. That is a version of VU which all should strive to create, but which does not in fact exist. Bowls are very precious things for the Commodores and their fans.

By Matt Zemek

That is exactly why this 2018 regular season can be called a success after Saturday’s thumping of the University of Tennessee.

Yet, to say that this season is a success simply because of a bowl win and a third straight triumph over the hated Vols is not sufficient as an expression of the enormity of the occasion.

To make a bowl and beat the Volunteers are both very big deals in and around the Vanderbilt program — no one needs a seminar on those basic statements of reality. However, Saturday’s win was important far beyond those two substantial and fundamental achievements.

If Michigan was playing for really high stakes against archrival Ohio State, Vanderbilt was playing for high stakes on an adjusted scale. No, VU wasn’t vying for a division championship and a spot in Conference Championship Saturday this upcoming December weekend, but this game mattered for reasons which transcended the obvious.

Vandy player carries UT playerYes, this was about a bowl bid and ruining Tennessee’s season, a 2-for-1 package deal no Vanderbilt fan can ever pass up. Yet, it was about so much more than those cornerstone achievements.

It might very well have been true that even if VU lost to the Vols, Derek Mason would have stayed on for 2019 as head coach. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that statement was true. If that had been the case (we will never know for sure), it would have been hard to muster up a lot of enthusiasm for next season. Maybe the retention of Mason would have been understandable, given all the other changes and uncertainties in the athletic department, but an understandable decision and a popular decision are two different things. No program needs headaches at any point in time, but especially not when a search for a new athletic director is occurring, and not when the idea of football fundraising is more prominent in conversations about the future and identity of Vanderbilt Athletics.

Why did Vanderbilt need a bowl bid and the satisfaction of knocking Tennessee out of a bowl? Not just for those goals themselves — considerable though they were and are — but because in a time of transition, the program needed to be able to arrive at the end of a regular season and say, “We can comfortably allow things to remain as they are for another year.” Getting to 6-6 enables Derek Mason to be safe in his job position through 2019. Getting to 6-6 also means that fans and other involved parties can agree that there should not be any debate about what happens next.

The program can take a breath while the new AD is identified and hired. That AD can inherit Mason next year without a lot of chaos or clamor. The two individuals can begin to collaborate and try to understand each other. Maybe the new athletic director will offer insights and forms of support which can unlock Mason’s abilities to an even greater extent. Then again, maybe not. The important thing is that Mason avoided a 5-7 finish which would have left no one satisfied and everyone wondering what the new athletic director would do as soon as s/he was hired.

That messy administrative drama — that political tug of war behind the scenes — has been removed from the realm of possibility. It would have sucked so much oxygen and energy from the room. It would have become an annoying and eventually tiresome distraction from the process of building the football program. It would have dominated local news coverage. It would have affected a lot of thought processes among people who are important to the athletic department. It would have created an uneasy, unsettled vibe in Nashville, magnifying worries at a program whose fans have been conditioned by history to expect the worst.

Winning that game against Tennessee — reaching 6-6 — wipes away all those exhausting, frustrating, draining, entirely unwelcome scenarios.

Everyone — administrators, coaches, players, fans, students — needed to be able to breathe at the end of this season instead of being dejected over missing a bowl game and seeing Jeremy Pruitt win his first Tennessee-Vanderbilt game as the Vols’ head coach. Everyone needed not just the catharsis of winning the year’s most emotional game, but the comfort of knowing that a coaching change doesn’t even need to be contemplated while the future of the athletic director’s position at VU is considered by university decision-makers.

No, nothing about this column is implying or suggesting that Mason and offensive coordinator Andy Ludwig have VU on a clear and notable upward trajectory. Vanderbilt is surviving more than flourishing. The program isn’t winning nine games per season. A different call on that Ole Miss non-catch in overtime on Nov. 17 could have played a part in sending Vanderbilt home. The 2018 season marked an act of stability, but not transformation.

Nevertheless, short-term stability in the face of so much change is hardly something to be dismissed or disliked. Everyone in the Vanderbilt family can exhale, fully support Mason as the coach of this team next year, and wait to see what the new athletic director brings to the table.

Vanderbilt did need to beat Tennessee and reach a bowl. Succeeding on those two fronts is cause for a loud and joyful celebration. Nevertheless, a win over a despised rival and the procurement of a postseason ticket represent merely part of the story for VU football. This program needed an offseason without profound controversy or persistent grumbling.

Beating Tennessee — handily, I might add — gave this program and everyone in it exactly what the doctor ordered.

At this time next year, we will be in a much better position to evaluate the holistic health of the patient known as Commodore football.

Vanderbilt Football Players

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