It’ll be easy, but don’t write off the loser of the wildly significant Mizzou-Vanderbilt showdown
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It’ll be an easy thing to do, so I’d encourage you not to do it.
Personally, I won’t write off the loser of a top-15 showdown between No. 15 Mizzou and No. 10 Vanderbilt, which feels more like an EA Sports College Football ’26 creation than real life. In real life, these 2 teams are playing in the final Saturday of October with 1 loss apiece and College GameDay on hand.
It’s not just that Vandy is hosting the popular pregame show for the 2nd time in program history (2008), and that this is a top-15 matchup with a 2.5-point spread (via BetMGM). It’s that this is already the 2nd time this year that Vandy is part of one of those matchups, and it’s the first time that Mizzou is involved in a College GameDay setting since 2014.
The loser of this game involving a pair of unranked teams in the preseason will get the old, pat-on-the-back-but-go-back-to-being-an-afterthought treatment nationally.
They might as well hand out a trophy to the losing team that’s just a kids table. Nationally, that’s where many will assume the loser is going after a brief stay at the adults’ table. Confirmation bias will creep in, and we’ll probably even get a handful of AP voters who forget that the loser of this game exists.
But that’d be a mistake. Dare I say, it’d be a mistake as egregious as sleeping on Diego Pavia or Ahmad Hardy, both of whom are in Year 2 of being stars worthy of national attention.
Let’s start with the basic reminder that loss No. 2 means something different in the 12-team Playoff era. Love it or hate it, the field will likely consist of more teams with multiple losses than not. Ergo, winning 4 in a row to get to 10-2 all but guarantees an SEC team a spot in the Playoff field.
Two things can be true at the same time
One is that the winner of this game is in ideal position to earn a Playoff bid as a 1-loss team heading into November, and beating a top-15 team will add to that résumé. There’s no denying that, regardless of whether that path to Atlanta is realistic for the winner, going into November with a loss to give is as much as either one of these teams could’ve asked for in August.
The other thing that can be true at the same time is that these remaining schedules aren’t exactly gauntlets. Let’s remember that both of these teams played in competitive games vs. Alabama for their lone loss — Jam Miller scored a rushing touchdown with 17 seconds left to make the Vandy game look more lopsided than it was — and the scariest SEC team is already in the rearview mirror. Mizzou’s post-Vandy SEC foes are a combined 6-9 in conference play while Vandy’s post-Mizzou foes are a combined 4-11 in SEC play.
Yes, both of those teams would probably be an underdog in 2 of their 4 remaining games. But then again, how big of an underdog would Vandy be at 2-loss Texas next week? And sure, it’s possible that Texas A&M might be 8-0 and ranked in the top 3 when Mizzou plays host to the Aggies next week, but we also just watched Mike Elko‘s defense get gashed in a 45-42 game at lowly Arkansas.
You could argue the same thing that Mizzou and Vandy have been at the center of in the SEC is the exact reason why that remaining schedule shouldn’t be considered a gauntlet. That is, parity.
That’s not meant to diminish what both programs have done. If Mizzou and Vandy had different logos on their helmets, they’d probably be ranked higher. We’re talking about a Mizzou team that was 21-5 over the last 2 seasons, but it started 2025 unranked. We’re talking about a Vandy team that had Pavia earn 2024 All-SEC honors at season’s end, but he didn’t receive that honor in the preseason. In different ways, both can play the rare “nobody believed in us” narrative that often falls on deaf ears in the SEC.
They’ve gotten to this point because they have strengths beyond those aforementioned focal points of their respective offenses
Mizzou has been a force on the defensive line with Zion Young and Damon Wilson II, both of whom are big reasons why only 1 opponent hit 4 yards per carry against the Tigers this season. You could say the same thing about Vandy with its improved defensive line, which has surrendered just 3 rushing touchdowns all year, none of which happened at FirstBank Stadium. These are top-15 units nationally against the run, which will be put to the test against a pair of ground attacks that have both run for as many touchdowns (22) as any Power Conference program.
While Mizzou’s defense excels at getting off the field on 3rd down, Vandy’s defense excels at getting in the backfield and creating negative plays to put an offense behind schedule. While Mizzou’s offense is among the nation’s best at getting all-important 10-yard completions, Vandy’s offense is among the nation’s best at 7.35 yards/play.
These are good, well-rounded teams, which is why they’re the best in the SEC in scoring through Week 8. Perhaps you could argue that neither team has beaten a true contender yet, and that multi-score wins vs. South Carolina shouldn’t have the nation on notice, even if we acknowledge that both teams played games that were decided late against juggernaut Alabama. After all, Florida State did more than that and what did that mean for the Seminoles?
But all that would be is moving the goalposts, especially after Vandy beat LSU as a favorite. It’s a convenient thing to do for these programs. It’ll ignore the remarkable jobs that Clark Lea and Eli Drinkwitz have done with teams who needed to make a variety of key personnel moves this offseason. Lea’s was stepping out of the defensive coordinator role he carried in 2024 during Vandy’s emergence onto the national stage while Drinkwitz’s was retooling an offense that had massive overhaul at the skill positions.
It’s safe to say that worked out pretty well for both of them.
It’ll work out better for one of them on Saturday when their teams meet. One will go into November with aspirations of a first Playoff berth very much alive while the other will … still have aspirations of a first Playoff berth very much alive.
Don’t be surprised if you haven’t heard the last of Saturday’s loser.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
