Chaos on the field and off: Headlines, top memories from Vanderbilt’s last win at Neyland

This Saturday will be an opportunity for Vanderbilt to break a pair of streaks — one lasting eight years, and the other lasting the program’s existence.

Currently boasting a 9-2 record, coach Clark Lea, quarterback Diego Pavia and the Commodores will travel to Tennessee knowing a victory against the Volunteers will be a twofold achievement. A Vanderbilt win would be its first in Knoxville since 2017 and mark the first 10-win season in the school’s history.

The last time Vanderbilt came out on top on the road against its rivals, things were a bit different around both programs. Unsurprisingly, Tennessee was in the midst of an atrocious conference campaign. The Volunteers were also on the verge of one of the most memorable coaching carousel moments in recent memory.

In Nashville, however, the script was flipped. The Commodores were in the middle of their best stretch in the rivalry in decades, as well as their strongest stretch under then-head coach Derek Mason.

Remembering that 2017 game offers a fascinating lens into the progress of both programs now — showing how far Tennessee has climbed since the depths of its late-2010s nadir, as well as how high Vanderbilt’s ceiling has been raised compared to previous high-water marks for the program.

With the two teams set to meet on Saturday at Neyland Stadium, we looked back at what things were like eight years prior.

A Volunteer season in shambles

Not all lost seasons are created equally. Tennessee’s 2017 campaign was about as ugly as things can get for a team that entered the season with a preseason ranking to its name.

Things started out in chaotic, if victorious, fashion as the Volunteers survived an overtime thriller against Georgia Tech in Week 1. A mid-September loss to Florida marked a first SEC defeat, but things got even more concerning a week later when Tennessee couldn’t pull away from Massachusetts. Things would only spiral from there.

The Vols would finish 0-8 in conference play, their first-ever winless SEC slate. Head coach Butch Jones was canned after a blowout loss to Missouri. Three different quarterbacks started at least one game, none of whom threw for more than 1,000 yards on the year.

An unforgettable coaching carousel whirlwind ensues in Knoxville

If Tennessee’s fall was tumultuous on the field, the ensuing offseason didn’t bring much more in the way of stability, at least at first.

Just one day after the Volunteers’ loss to the Commodores, then-AD John Currie thought he had his man. He and Ohio State defensive coordinator Greg Schiano had signed a memorandum of understanding for Schiano to be the next head coach in Knoxville. When news leaked of the pending Schiano hire, however, fans revolted, with many protests citing his alleged witnessing of an incident involving Jerry Sandusky and a boy while Schiano was at Penn State. (Schiano denied the allegation.)

Tennessee backed out of the deal, and then failed to land a variety of other prospective targets, leading former Vols coach Lane Kiffin to fire up his social media. Eventually, the school and Currie parted ways before a hire could be made, with new athletic director Phillip Fulmer eventually landing on and inking a deal with Jeremy Pruitt.

Vanderbilt controls the rivalry for the first time in a generation

While Tennessee’s dominance in the in-state rivalry in the 2000s and 2010s wasn’t as completely ironclad as it had been in prior generations — the Volunteers won every edition of the annual game from 1983 to 2004, for scale — it was still generally pretty strong. But for a brief stretch of the years spanning James Franklin and Derek Mason’s tenures in Nashville, the Commodores found a spark.

Starting in 2012, Franklin’s second of three years coaching Vanderbilt, the Commodores won five of the next seven games in the rivalry. Franklin’s back-to-back wins over Tennessee in 2012 and 2013 were the first consecutive wins by Vanderbilt in the game since the 1920s. Mason topped that streak with three straight wins over the Volunteers from 2018-20 — also the first such occurrence since the Roaring ’20s. Both Franklin and Mason won a game apiece in Neyland Stadium, accounting for two of Vanderbilt’s three total wins in Knoxville since 1975.

The Commodores seem to find their footing under Mason

There are no bones about it: Vanderbilt isn’t an easy place to win at in football.

Prior to Franklin’s arrival in 2011, the Commodores had won nine games just once, in 1915. They hadn’t had a winning record in conference play since 1955, compared to 18 different winless SEC seasons in between that 1955 campaign and Franklin’s arrival.

Mason was hired after Franklin left for Penn State, and while his debut campaign was difficult, his stretch of successes against Tennessee felt in line with what seemed to be a program that was rediscovering its footing with a solid SEC floor. Vanderbilt went 6-7, 5-7 and 6-7 under Mason from 2016-2018 — prior to Franklin, the most recent Commodores coach to post multiple six-win seasons in his tenure was Bill Edwards in the 1960s.

Things would falter soon after, though. Vanderbilt won just one SEC game across Mason’s final two seasons in 2019 and 2020, and Clark Lea was hired to replace him.

Elsewhere in the college football world…

As the Commodores and Volunteers clashed in Neyland Stadium during the final week of the 2017 regular season in a game that had little stakes besides local pride, plenty of chaos was causing a rankings shakeup around the rest of the country.

Both the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the country fell that weekend — top-ranked Alabama was taken down by No. 6 Auburn in the Iron Bowl, while No. 2 Miami was upset on the road by Pitt on Friday afternoon.

Interestingly, only one of these results proved consequential to the final College Football Playoff field. Miami fell to seventh in the ensuing playoff rankings and then was rolled by new No. 1 Clemson in the ACC championship game. Alabama, which fell to fifth in the rankings, would end up making it back into the final field when newly minted No. 4 Wisconsin and No. 2 Auburn each lost in its own conference championship games.