The 2024 Vanderbilt football season is already one that will be remembered for centuries. Beating the No. 1 team in the country at Commodore Stadium — sealed by gleeful students tearing down a goalpost and toting it across town — guaranteed that for coach Clark Lea’s program.

But there is one more hill to climb to truly make the 2024 Commodores special, one more upset to chisel into the history books of what has already been a weird and wild season across college football.

It is time for Vanderbilt to beat Tennessee.

Don’t laugh. The Commodores knocking off Tennessee — No. 7 in the AP poll and No. 8 in the College Football Playoff rankings — would be a fitting exclamation point for arguably the strangest Southeastern Conference season in recent memory. And it isn’t like it hasn’t happened before, either: The Commodores have taken down the Volunteers 32 times in the 118-game history of the cross-state rivalry between founding members of the SEC.

Pay no attention to Tennessee’s 22-game winning streak from 1983 to 2004, or the Vols’ current 5-game on-field winning streak (the 2019 and 2020 UT victories were vacated due to recruiting violations under former head coach Jeremy Pruitt). Before then, Vandy rattled off 3 straight wins — including a 45-34 upset victory over 17th-ranked Tennessee in Nashville in 2016.

Vanderbilt has more than a puncher’s chance this time around, too, even though the Volunteers are primed to earn a spot in the 12-team CFP. As mentioned earlier, the Commodores already have the taste of seismic upsets in their memory banks after shocking top-ranked Alabama, 40-35, on Oct. 5.

At that moment, beating the Crimson Tide was Vanderbilt’s biggest victory in school history. But it easily could have been the Commodores’ 2nd straight W against a Top-10 team — as Vandy missed 2 field goals, including a 31-yarder to win, in a 30-27 double-OT road loss at No. 7 Missouri.

Between that overtime loss to Mizzou and squandering a lead in the final minute of a 36-32 loss to Georgia State, Vanderbilt easily could be 8-3 right now instead of 6-5. The football bounces the other way against No. 5 Texas on Oct. 26 (a 27-24 Longhorns escape) and at LSU last weekend (a 24-17 Tigers victory), and suddenly we are talking about Vanderbilt — Vanderbilt! — as a potential Playoff team.

Of course, it doesn’t work that way: The ball bounces funny in both directions over the course of a season. But there is no question that Vanderbilt is legitimate in 2024. That’s due primarily to the transcendent play of transfer quarterback Diego Pavia. The former New Mexico State standout took a chance on Lea’s culture-building initiative in Nashville, and it has paid off — with Pavia throwing for 2,029 yards and 16 touchdowns this season to go with a team-best 671 rushing yards and 6 more TDs.

Still, even with bowl eligibility for the 1st time since 2018, Lea wants more for Vanderbilt than a 1-off season in the sun. Sure, the turnaround from a 2-10 mark last season has earned Vandy’s 4th-year coach and former Commodores player more than a couple of Coach of the Year whispers, but he firmly believes building correctly is much better than simply riding the rush.

“I’m very grateful for the recognition, the respect this program is earning,” Lea told The Tennessean newspaper earlier this week. “And yet, I still have this kind of internal fear around, ‘What do we need to be doing now to keep moving this thing forward?’ Because I want this not to be a 1-time moment.

“I want this to be the starting of something that ends up becoming consistent and understood and respected over the course of time.”

That will take shrewd recruiting and a bit of patience from a fan base hungry for more now that it has a taste of success in the new era of the sport. Finding more Pavias from places like New Mexico State via the transfer portal and converting exposure into NIL dollars will be pivotal to sustained growth.

For all the recruiting and patience necessary, capping Vanderbilt’s magical 2024 run would truly be complete not with a bowl trip somewhere sunny but with taking down the Big Orange Menace across the state. The task will be tall, as Tennessee also has eyes on upward mobility toward the level of national prominence it had not too terribly long ago.

Oddsmakers don’t like Vandy’s chances, installing them as an 11-point home underdog against Josh Heupel’s high-powered offense. Quarterback Nico Iamaleava is improving on the job every week, and running back Dylan Sampson not only has double the rushing yards as Pavia but leads a Vols rushing attack that ranks 9th in the country.

But punchers always have a chance — just ask Buster Douglas or the old-man version of George Foreman — against more highly-skilled opponents. And Vanderbilt — yes, Vanderbilt! — has already shocked the world once this season.

Why not do it again?

David Wasson

An APSE national award-winning writer and page designer, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.