The Goldfather spent some time with Paul Finebaum on Friday ahead of Saturday’s showdown with No. 1 Alabama.

Vanderbilt’s vice chancellor for athletics and university affairs and athletics director, David Williams, discussed the matchup with Alabama and how the game has drawn CBS Sports and SEC Network shows like The Paul Finebaum Show to Nashville. The Commodores are set to have their second straight sell out game following last week’s win over Kansas State.

Finebaum asked Williams why he stayed the course with coach Derek Mason after a lackluster start to his tenure in Nashville.

“There was a time when a lot of people, you were maybe in the minority of Vanderbilt people who thought this was going to work out,” Finebaum said. “What did you see that helped you stay the course?”

Williams replied, “I think from sort of a long range or macro thing is they tended, or we tended here, to get in our way more than anybody else. We tried to always do things so to speak in other people’s language. So to try to understand who you are, what you are, conquer your lane, know your lane, and then come make play you in your lane, make them beat you in your lane. I think we had to sort of correct ourselves. I always thought there was a lot of potential, and the other thing is you’ve got to take the time. You got to have your patience. We just can’t jump, jump, jump when things aren’t going the way we want. And when we have the patience, things will work out just fine.”

Finebaum referred to the coaching change when James Franklin left, and added that almost everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. The host referred to Williams’ experience and how he didn’t want to make a change with Mason.

“I’ve always thought that Derek was going to get it done,” Williams said. “When we hired Derek, and I remember at that point in time when James had decided to leave and we started looking and I’m a big person that believes in the concept of defense. We need to find the best defense and all I knew was Stanford was shutting down Oregon every time they played. I didn’t even know the name of the coordinator, but I said I want to know who that dude is.”

Williams added that he had people during the low early times of the Mason tenure who wanted to get rid of the coach, and those same people have told him now to sign the coach to a lifetime contract.

“It took time for him to get his system and get people to understand it, and get the kids to understand it,” Williams said. “But I think all along we thought it was going to happen and it goes back to the other thing, you’ve just got to be patient. It’s not going to do whatever you want to do overnight.”

The game is set to kick off at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on Saturday.