If you follow Vanderbilt sports, you know students’ disappointment whenever football season comes around. The first game of my freshman year, I recall packing into the crowded student section on a scorching August evening to see Vanderbilt play ETSU — an “easy win” that ended in a 23-3 loss and cost us $415,000. Suffice it to say, my passion for Vanderbilt football quickly atrophied into indifference. 

For three painstakingly long years, I questioned why I should care about college football. I routinely gave my free student ticket to any out-of-town guests who wanted one, silently chuckling at their naïvete that, somehow, this game would be different from the past few smackdowns on live television. I went to no more than the traditional parents’ weekend game, mostly just to partake in the “SEC environment” that I came down south to experience.

To cap off my senior year, I decided to go to as many football games as possible in order to claim I had the proper college experience before embarking on the next step of my journey. To say that I did so skeptically and cynically would be an understatement. I was more than prepared to jump ship and jokingly start cheering for our opponent so I could finally experience football happiness in college.

Yet, when I went to the Virginia Tech game in August, a 34-27 win for the Commodores, something emerged within me, pent up from years of tragedy and last-minute losses: I cared. That narrow win illuminated the spark that I took to that game against ETSU as a first-year, snuffed out by watching us lose repeatedly to schools that refused to take pity on a struggling team such as ourselves. Suddenly, I was talking about Vanderbilt football to anyone who would listen. I even predicted we would go to a bowl game this year, and for a week after that VT win, I mapped out the path to victory when I should have been doing my homework.

If you want to see how different this year is from the past, look at the headlines from The Hustler on that fateful win. Our student section was so crowded that they had to close it, something once unfathomable to every student on campus. Something long lost to Vanderbilt football was in the air that summer morning: passion. We cared. Nobody saw it coming, let alone me.

For the next few games, my peers and I continued to care. The week after VT, we watched the team demolish Alcorn State 55-0, making us realize how it felt to be on the other side of a Georgia-style win. I couldn’t help but wonder: Were we actually…good? Was my adrenaline-fueled prediction of a bowl game somehow going to come true?

The following two games, true to Vanderbilt fashion, ended in tragedy. A last-minute 36-32 away loss to Georgia State and a gut-wrenching overtime 30-27 defeat at Missouri threatened to bring my once hopeful spirit back down to reality, begging me to give up this meaningless quest for a winning football season. 

However, while watching those games via shaky livestream, I couldn’t stop caring. I refused to turn off the games as we began to lose. I couldn’t be bothered to text my friends and family back unless it was about the game unfolding before my eyes. I was finally a proud Commodore, through and through, and no loss would take that away from me. Not even the inevitable crushing I thought we would receive from Alabama after our bye week could bring me down.

The night before the Alabama game, I decided to predict something incredibly optimistic: We would beat the Crimson Tide. My friends and I laughed, knowing we were about to see a No. 1-ranked team demolish us in football without a care in the world. Yet, as I drifted off to sleep that night, an inkling of a thought invaded my mind: What if we did win?

I woke up bright and early on Saturday morning and assembled my friends, ready to see us play in the baking heat. As we made our way to the stadium amidst a sea of red (and some black and gold), I could smell something in the air. It wasn’t the stale Greek Row beer or the passing cars’ exhaust with passengers proclaiming their support for Vanderbilt. It was something I hadn’t felt since that ETSU game back in 2021: The fans cared. You could see it in the student section, closed yet again and packed to the brim, crowding the standing room, tunnel and concourses outside. It was pandemonium.

I watched Vanderbilt score two touchdowns from behind the swarm of my fellow students eager to see the game. It was 13-0. I was shocked. I needed to watch this game, but it was out of the question to get into that stadium. My friends and I retreated to a sports bar nearby, eager to see if the impossible would happen. We watched with bated breath as Alabama scored, preparing for them to “wake up” and smack us around FirstBank Stadium faster than you could say “roll tide.” But somehow, the impossible became a reality. They never came back. Vanderbilt won. My prediction came true. We had beaten a No. 1 team for the first time in our history.

Every student on this campus will tell you where they were when the Commodores defeated Alabama on that field. I was at SATCO, across 21st Ave. from campus, watching from a TV on the patio with a bean and cheese taco in my hand. My friends erupted with glee and disbelief. My mouth dropped open. My taco fell on the floor. I was stunned. 

Without hesitation, I dropped my food and we ran. We sprinted across campus, screaming cheers of amazement and delight at the improbability of the spectacle I had just witnessed. I passed Alabama fans streaming from the stadium in disbelief. I ran to the concourse gates, sprinted up the steps to the bleachers and leaped onto the field, where my peers were tearing up the goalpost and moshing around Diego Pavia as if he were a deity sent down to bless our football team.

If you stood on that field and looked at the crowd, you saw one thing in common: genuine glee. You saw first-years who had been dragged to this game by their friends, seniors like myself who were in disbelief on their knees on the 50-yard line and even local fans, overcome with emotion after years of disappointment and apathy, letting their tears of joy run free on that turf. 

For a brief, glorious moment, we weren’t spectators on those bleachers. We weren’t just fans. We were all together, reveling in the triumphant upset that our football team pulled off, stunning our campus, Nashville and the entire college football world. To call it magical was an understatement: this was a David and Goliath story come to life.

In the grand scheme of things, that win didn’t matter. Vanderbilt is (probably) not going to a bowl game this year, and we will not magically become a ranked team just because we took down a No. 1-seeded team on a glorious Saturday night in Nashville. Furthermore, this game will not solve all the problems and stressors at the forefront of my mind, especially those with pressing deadlines. Who cares about a college football result when all of campus is reeling from the midterms bearing down on our necks?

But somehow, the futility of that win made it even more special to celebrate. Whether you are a fan or a passionate hater — no matter your position on college football — you can’t deny how beautiful it was to see thousands of students from all walks of life come together and revel in the extraordinariness of this victory. Feel free to critique our destruction and temporary relocation of a goalpost, but watch those clips again and look at the faces of those students. They care. 

You can ask our sports section for their expert thoughts to determine what the remaining seven games will look like record-wise. Regardless, I can promise you that, no matter what, this energy I feel today won’t disappear. I will be in those stands for the rest of the season, eagerly cheering on my team. And, this time next year, when I’m off in the big, scary world away from Vanderbilt, I’ll be cheering them on from afar, filled with the passion and fandom I brought with me to my first football game all those years ago.

I’m proud to say I participated in the feverish enthusiasm that swept our campus. I hugged everybody I knew with tears of joy and shouted the same phrase into the night sky: 

“WE BEAT BAMA.” 

24 hours later, it still doesn’t feel real.