Commodore Nation — are you not entertained?
For the first time ever, Vanderbilt’s football, men’s and women’s basketball and baseball teams are all ranked during the same academic year.
Read that again. Let it sink in. We are currently witnessing the best year in the history of Vanderbilt Athletics.
In the five months since Vanderbilt Football began its season in August, fans have rushed a field and stormed two basketball courts. Sure, Vanderbilt may have accumulated $850,000 in fines as a result, but you can’t put a price tag on the memory of a No. 1 upset, a goalpost march and a healthy dose of Memorial Magic.
The Commodore faithful witnessed a ranked football team for the first time since the 2013 season. Two months later, they watched as star quarterback Diego Pavia accumulated five total touchdowns and led the Black and Gold to a win over Georgia Tech in the Birmingham Bowl — Vanderbilt’s first bowl win since that same 2013 season.
Eli Stowers, Vanderbilt’s first first-team All-SEC selection since Jordan Matthews, announced he’d be returning for his final season after the game. He and Pavia have the chance to be one of the best passing duos in all of FBS in 2025.
Then there’s Vanderbilt Men’s and Women’s Basketball, both amidst their best seasons in recent Vanderbilt sports memory.
Let’s start with the men. Head coach Mark Byington has orchestrated a masterful turnaround of this program. Vanderbilt went 9-23 (4-14) last season under former head coach Jerry Stackhouse. The Commodores were losers of their first seven games of 2024 and had to wait until Feb. 3 to get a win over the last-place Missouri Tigers. Fast forward 365 days and Byington has the Black and Gold at 4-3 in SEC play — already matching their conference win total from last season — and 16-4 overall.
To boot, the Vanderbilt Men’s Basketball program is ranked No. 24— the first time it has broken into the AP Poll since 2015.
The results are one thing, but the way that the team has gotten to this point is another. Byington inherited a shell of a roster, with only two players from the 2023-24 team returning and two first-years committed. Of those four, only Tyler Tanner plays meaningful minutes. The former James Madison coach found the other eight players who play double-digit minutes in the transfer portal. For this patchwork roster, which played a total of zero minutes in the SEC prior to this season, to have won 16 of 20 games and pulled off back-to-back top-10 home upsets is nothing short of miraculous.
As good as Byington’s crew is, their female counterparts might be even better. Head coach Shea Ralph’s team is sitting at 18-4 (5-3) and, after four straight wins — two of which were ranked — is ranked (No. 23) for the first time since 2013-14. They boast the best two-woman show in America, as Khamil Pierre and Mikayla Blakes’ combined 42.6 points per game leads all of Division I Women’s Basketball.
Look no further for evidence of Vanderbilt’s newfound athletic prosperity than Blakes’ Jan. 30 performance. The superstar’s 53 points on the road against Florida set the NCAA freshman record for single-game scoring. She also shattered Vanderbilt’s all-time single-game scoring output of 42, set by Pierre less than two months ago. Blakes is a generational talent and fans are, to put it mildly, incredibly lucky that she chose to play for the Black and Gold.
Ralph took a program that never made the NCAA Tournament under former head coach Stephanie White — and went .500 or worse in five of the six seasons White coached — and has built it into a contender. Vanderbilt Women’s Basketball returned to the postseason last season and even won a game against Columbia. Ralph earned a much-deserved extension after that, and, if her success this season has proved anything, it’s that her extension might actually be a bargain for Vanderbilt.
Baseball season hasn’t started just yet, though it’s right around the corner, but head coach Tim Corbin’s pedigree is known. He’s one of the best coaches in the country and has led Vanderbilt to the NCAA Regionals for 19 years in a row. Vanderbilt is ranked at No. 16 in D1 Baseball’s preseason poll.
That isn’t even to mention the non-revenue sports that have thrived on West End. Vanderbilt Soccer just made its deepest NCAA Tournament run in program history. Vanderbilt Bowling is the No. 1 team in the country and is less than two years removed from a national championship. Men’s tennis just brought in the No. 3 class in the country and women’s tennis is on the verge of getting ranked. The list goes on.
Vandy United — the university’s $350 million-plus commitment to rebuilding athletics facilities — is finally starting to produce results. The Huber Center was recently unveiled and looks to be one of the nicest basketball-specific facilities in the world. FirstBank Stadium’s construction will be done by the start of the 2025 season after two long years of cranes and hardhats.
Needless to say: Things are looking up on West End. The mastermind behind all of it?
Athletic director Candice Storey Lee. Clark Lea, Byington, Ralph and Co. have gotten credit for their efforts this season, but the real story here is Lee.
Lee has taken plenty of flack since being appointed Vanderbilt’s athletic director in May of 2020. Multiple 2-10 football seasons, a construction-riddled FirstBank Stadium and only one NCAA Tournament appearance for both basketball teams caused many to question whether Lee was the right person for the job.
As critics took to social media to call for her to be replaced, Lee went to work. She’s the perfect person to represent Vanderbilt University, and not just because she played basketball for the Black and Gold and got her bachelor’s, master’s and PhD here.
She’s a complete trailblazer. Lee is not just the only female athletic director in the SEC; she’s the first Black woman to be an athletic director in the conference, which has been around for nearly 100 years.
Lee is unafraid of change, and this year has shown that. She and her staff have completely changed their approach toward recruiting players out of the transfer portal. Vanderbilt Football brought just three players in via the transfer portal in the 2023 offseason and suffered because of it, going 2-10 in the ensuing months. Vanderbilt took note of that and changed its approach, bringing 22 transfer commits in during the 2024 offseason, including Pavia, Stowers and Randon Fontenette.
Her hirings of Ralph and Byington simply cannot go under-praised. The two have emerged as one of the best coaching duos in all of college basketball. Both of them have done something that neither of their predecessors — Stephanie White and Jerry Stackhouse — could do: get the ‘Dores ranked. Vanderbilt is one of just seven teams to be ranked in both men’s and women’s basketball. Included in that list? Kentucky, Michigan State, Tennessee, UConn, Duke and Alabama. That’s pretty elite company for Vanderbilt to be in, especially when you consider where it was — particularly the men’s program — just a year ago.
To students, alumni, sidewalk fans and the rest of the proud Black and Gold: We are witnessing the beginning of a golden age of Vanderbilt Athletics. Take some time to appreciate this moment because generations of students and fans waited — well, forever — for this.
Once you’re done savoring the moment, make sure to thank Lee for what she’s done to revitalize a program that felt lost just months ago.
