Revisiting the last time Vanderbilt beat Tennessee at Neyland Stadium
This Saturday will be an opportunity for Vanderbilt to break two streaks – one lasting eight years and the other during the existence of the program.
Currently boasting a 9-2 record, coach Clark Lea, quarterback Diego Pavia and the Commodores will travel to Tennessee knowing that a victory against the Volunteers will be a double feat. A Vanderbilt victory would be Knoxville’s first since 2017 and mark the first 10-win season in school history.
The last time Vanderbilt won on the road against its rivals, things were a little different around the two programs. Not surprisingly, Tennessee was in the middle of an atrocious conference campaign. The Volunteers were also about to experience one of the most memorable coaching carousel moments in recent memory.
In Nashville, however, the script was flipped. The Commodores were in the midst of their best rivalry streak in decades, as well as their strongest streak under then-head coach Derek Mason.
Remembering that the 2017 game now offers a fascinating perspective on the progress of both programs – showing how far Tennessee has climbed from the depths of its late 2010s nadir, as well as how high Vanderbilt’s ceiling has been raised from the program’s previous high water levels.
With the two teams set to meet on Saturday at Neyland Stadium, we took a look at what things looked like eight years ago.
A volunteer season in ruins
Not all Lost Seasons are created equal. Tennessee’s 2017 campaign was about as ugly as things can get for a team that entered the season with a preseason ranking under its belt.
Things got off to a chaotic, albeit victorious, start as the Volunteers survived an overtime thriller against Georgia Tech in Week 1. A mid-September loss to Florida marked a first SEC defeat, but things became even more ominous a week later when Tennessee was unable to pull away from Massachusetts. Things would only get worse from there.
The Vols would finish 0-8 in conference play, their first-ever SEC slate without a win. Head coach Butch Jones was fired after a blowout loss to Missouri. Three different quarterbacks started at least one game, none of whom threw for more than 1,000 yards on the year.
An unforgettable coaching carousel whirlwind ensues in Knoxville
If Tennessee’s fall was tumultuous on the field, the ensuing offseason didn’t bring much more stability, at least initially.
Just a day after the Volunteers lost to the Commodores, then-AD John Currie thought he had his man. He and Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano had signed a memorandum of understanding for Schiano to be Knoxville’s next head coach. However, when news of Schiano’s impending hiring leaked, fans revolted, with many protests citing his alleged testimony of an incident involving Jerry Sandusky and a boy while Schiano was at Penn State. (Schiano has denied this allegation.)
Tennessee backed out of the deal, then failed to land various other potential targets, leading former Vols coach Lane Kiffin to fire up his social media. Ultimately, the school and Currie parted ways before a hire could be made, with new athletic director Phillip Fulmer eventually landing and signing a deal with Jeremy Pruitt.
Vanderbilt controls rivalry for first time in a generation
Although Tennessee’s dominance in the in-state rivalry in the 2000s and 2010s was not as ironclad as in previous generations – the Volunteers won every edition of the annual game from 1983 to 2004, for the scale – it was still generally quite strong. But during a brief period in the years spanning the tenures of James Franklin and Derek Mason in Nashville, the Commodores found a spark.
Beginning in 2012, the second of Franklin’s three years coaching Vanderbilt, the Commodores won five of the next seven games in the rivalry. Franklin’s back-to-back wins over Tennessee in 2012 and 2013 were Vanderbilt’s first back-to-back wins in the game since the 1920s. Mason topped that streak with three straight wins over the Volunteers from 2018 to 2020 – also the first such event since the Roaring Twenties. Franklin and Mason won one game each at Neyland Stadium, accounting for two of Vanderbilt’s three total victories in Knoxville since 1975.
The Commodores appear to be finding their place under Mason
There’s no doubt: Vanderbilt is not an easy place to win in football.
Before Franklin’s arrival in 2011, the Commodores had won nine games just once, in 1915. They hadn’t had a conference winning record since 1955, compared to 18 different SEC seasons without a win between that 1955 campaign and Franklin’s arrival.
Mason was hired after Franklin left for Penn State, and although his first campaign was rough, his run of success against Tennessee seemed consistent with what appeared to be a program getting back on its feet with a strong SEC floor. Vanderbilt went 6-7, 5-7 and 6-7 under Mason from 2016-18 – before Franklin, the last Commodores coach to post multiple six-win seasons during his tenure was Bill Edwards in the 1960s.
But things would take a turn for the worse soon after. Vanderbilt only won one SEC game in Mason’s final two seasons in 2019 and 2020, and Clark Lea was hired to replace him.
Elsewhere in the world of college football…
As the Commodores and Volunteers faced off at Neyland Stadium during the final week of the 2017 regular season in a game that had little at stake outside of local pride, there was plenty of chaos causing an upheaval in the standings throughout the rest of the country.
The nation’s No. 1 and No. 2 teams fell this weekend: Top-ranked Alabama was defeated by No. 6 Auburn in the Iron Bowl, while No. 2 Miami was upset on the road by Pitt on Friday afternoon.
Interestingly, only one of these results proved decisive for the final field of the College Football Playoff. Miami fell to seventh place in the ensuing playoff rankings, then was defeated by new No. 1 Clemson in the ACC championship game. Alabama, which fell to fifth in the rankings, would eventually return to the final field when new No. 4 Wisconsin and No. 2 Auburn each lost in their own conference championship games.
