There’s a real chance that fans look back at December 2024 as the month that forever altered the trajectory of Vanderbilt’s football program, and it won’t be because of a bowl game.

I certainly didn’t expect Vanderbilt to be playing football in December 2024 after it went 2-10 in 2023 and lost a number of its best players to the transfer portal. For head coach Clark Lea go 6-6 and make a bowl game — with the No. 8 strength of schedule in FBS, nonetheless — is nothing short of impressive.  He successfully quieted all preseason questions surrounding his job security while bringing Vanderbilt back to the postseason for the first time since 2018. He and his staff deserve credit for that.

Vanderbilt dropped its final three games of the 2024 regular season in disappointing fashion, losing to South Carolina, Tennessee and LSU by an average of two touchdowns. I’m not sure if these struggles were due to personnel issues or injuries after a grueling SEC slate. In reality, it’s probably a combination of both (and more).

Will Vanderbilt capitalize on the momentum it built during the early parts of the 2024 regular season and continue its upward trajectory? Or will it waste the opportunity and come crashing back down to earth?

The answer to these questions rests squarely on the shoulders of Lea, athletic director Candice Storey Lee and Anchor Impact. The good news for them? There’s a three-word fix for all of these problems, and it starts on Dec. 9.

The transfer portal.

The portal has fundamentally changed the landscape of college football since its introduction in 2018. Each year, teams rely more and more on transfers to help bolster their rosters, opting for experienced players who can slot right into impact roles, as opposed to high schoolers. This reliance on transfers has only skyrocketed with the introduction of the NCAA’s name, image and likeness program in 2021.

Vanderbilt’s predicament

NIL collectives have since become the heart and soul (or, perhaps more appropriately, bank) of college football programs. Schools like Texas ($22 million), LSU ($20 million), and Georgia ($18 million) spent big in 2023 and are estimated to make up three of the nation’s four most funded collectives. Texas A&M, Alabama, Florida, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Auburn, Arkansas and Kentucky are also among the nation’s top 20 in NIL collective funding. Expect these schools to spend even more this offseason.

Most SEC football programs benefit from something of a cyclical phenomenon — they succeed on the field, and boosters then reward that success by filling the school’s pockets with cash. SEC fans are, to put it mildly, football crazy. They’ll do anything they can to lift their favorite team to success, even if it means opening their wallets.

Vanderbilt hasn’t lived up to the SEC standard since Lea’s arrival in 2021, boasting a cumulative 9-27 record through his first three seasons. Those on-field struggles have made it more difficult for the Commodores to attract the high-end talent necessary to contend in the SEC — where it just means more.

The Black and Gold, fueled by their most successful season since 2018, now have a chance to break that cycle. Commodore Nation is passionate about football in a way they haven’t been since James Franklin era ended in 2013. 

Now it’s time for Vanderbilt to deliver.

Lea, Lee, Paul Grindstaff (the executive director of Anchor Impact) and their respective staff members have almost certainly been on a fundraising warpath this fall. They know, better than anyone else, the importance of bringing in talent via the transfer portal. They can’t do that without financial support from boosters.

The winter window of the transfer portal, slated to open from Dec. 9-28, represents the most important part of 2024 for Vanderbilt Football. More than fall camp, when it fleshed out its starters for the regular season. More than any part of its nonconference schedule. Even more than that three-week stretch of games between its upset of Alabama and its nailbiter against Texas.

Vanderbilt is going to lose a lot of its starters when this season ends. Let’s break it down.

The departures

Eight of Vanderbilt’s 24 starters will be out of eligibility after its bowl game (That number could rise to nine if Diego Pavia loses his lawsuit against the NCAA.) Steven Hubbard, Steven Losoya and Xavier Castillo — three of Vanderbilt’s offensive line starters — will be gone, along with Gunnar Hansen, who entered the transfer portal on Dec. 6. 

Wide receiver Quincy Skinner Jr. will also play his last game in the Black and Gold this month as will secondary starters De’Rickey Wright, CJ Taylor and Tyson Russell. Punter Jesse Mirco completes the list of eight. 

There are also juniors and seniors — all starters — who have eligibility left but could try their hands at the 2025 NFL Draft. That list includes Eli Stowers, Khordae Sydnor, Langston Patterson and Miles Capers. While there’s no way of knowing whether they will declare for the draft and move to the next level, any (or all) could reasonably leave Vanderbilt this offseason through the draft or the portal.

A number of Vanderbilt’s depth pieces — Moni Jones, Loic Fouonji, Kevo Wesley, Gage Pitchford, Aeneas DiCosmo and Christian James — will also run out of eligibility at the end of this season. 

The portal doesn’t officially open until Dec. 9. Still, Vanderbilt has already lost a number of transfers, including Hansen and Nate Johnson, they announced via social media earlier this week.

So, what does all this mean? Lea’s going to have a busy December. 

“We’re going to have a lot of work over the next few weeks as the transfer portal opens,” Lea said on Dec. 4. “We’re going to be a little more portal-heavy [this offseason].”

If the Commodores revert back to their sub-.500 ways in 2025, I fear they’ll lose the support (and momentum) they worked so hard to build up this year and we’ll be back to watching 40-point blowouts in FirstBank Stadium. Vanderbilt needs to get ready to spend money — and a lot of it — if it’s serious about creating a championship contender. 

The needs 

Let’s assume that Pavia either loses his lawsuit or wins it and decides to transfer somewhere else — Vanderbilt has to bring a quarterback in from the portal, especially with Johnson’s departure.

Lea will have plenty of options, but he’ll need to bring in a dual-threat quarterback that fits into offensive coordinator Tim Beck’s scheme. Oklahoma’s Jackson Arnold and Liberty’s Kaidon Salter come to mind immediately, but other qualified signal callers will become available as Dec. 9 gets closer and closer. A quarterback will likely be Vanderbilt’s biggest NIL-related expense of this portal period. Once the Commodores get that sorted out, they can focus on their other significant offensive needs. 

The Commodores desperately need some game-changing pass-catchers. As good as Stowers — a genuine NFL prospect — was, he was Vanderbilt’s only consistent playmaker on the outside. Teams zoned in on him after his sensational performance against Ball State in October — he failed to exceed 41 receiving yards over the team’s final five games — and it completely hampered the Commodores’ passing game. The lack of verticality made the offense one-dimensional and kept its ground attack largely in check, too. Beck’s unit failed to surpass 24 points over its final seven games after doing so in each of its first five. 

Transfers Fouonji, Dariyan Wiley and Jeremiah Dillon were all disappointing in 2024, forcing Junior Sherrill — a natural slot receiver — to play on the outside. Beck got 1,139 receiving yards out of his wide receiver unit this year, the least production in the SEC by a significant margin. There won’t be a shortage of wide receivers available in the portal, but Vanderbilt has to do a better job of pulling contributors in. 

Atop my list of (realistic) targets for the room is Omari Kelly, a transfer from Middle Tennessee State. I expect Vanderbilt to make a serious push to keep him in central Tennessee. Trent Hudson, a Mississippi State transfer, used to play with Beck and the rest of the Aggies-turned-Commodores at New Mexico State. CJ Daniels, an LSU transfer who used to play with Salter at Liberty, might follow the quarterback wherever he goes. 

Then, there’s the issue of Vanderbilt’s offensive line. The good news is that there are plenty of options at both tackle and interior offensive line in the portal. The bad news is that building chemistry with a unit that’s never played together before will be a challenge for offensive line coach Chris Klenakis. 

Defense is going to be a major focus in the portal, too. Vanderbilt will need to pull in some secondary members — namely safeties — in the wake of Taylor and Wright’s departure. Lea’s cornerbacks struggled this year, but he’ll get Marlon Jones Jr. and Mark Davis back next year after missing both of them for the entire 2024 season. 

I’m more worried about the Commodores’ edge rushers. They were the weakest position group on the roster outside of wide receivers last season and were completely outmatched in size and athleticism by opposing SEC offensive lines toward the end of the season. Zaylin Wood’s return from injury should help, but I still anticipate Lea to bring in a handful of pass rushers from the portal. 

The Commodores have Alabama transfer Keanu Koht scheduled for a visit in the coming weeks. Koht was a former 4-star linebacker with two years of eligibility left and would represent a massive portal victory for Lea and Co. I also have my eye on Aiden Gobaira, a transfer from Notre Dame who was recruited by — you guessed it — Lea. 

Speaking more generally: Vanderbilt needs to bolster its depth in 2025. The Commodores’ starters were great during the early parts of 2024, but as the season wore on and they got banged up, it became clear that they were missing the depth to fill in the gaps. Not every transfer this offseason will be flashy and inspiring from the get-go, but they’ll all need to play a role in building off the back of this season’s momentum. 

At the end of the day, the specific players and positions that Lea brings in don’t matter. The results do.

Vanderbilt had a magical season in 2024, but there’s not a single person involved in the program that has 6-6 as the precipice of the program’s capabilities: They want to soar higher. They want to become a year-in, year-out contender in not just the SEC but the entire NCAA. 

Winning a bowl game and becoming complacent won’t do that. Crushing the transfer portal will.