Mark Wiedmer
With Will Holden (74) celebrating in the background, Ralph Webb (7) heads toward the endzone for touchdown that would put Vanderbilt up 45 to 34 over Tennessee. The Tennessee Volunteers visited the Vanderbilt Commodores in a cross-state rivalry at Dudley Stadium on November 26, 2016. NASHVILLE - Do you want it? Or do you need it?
If you posed that question to the Vanderbilt football team prior to its Saturday night visit from Tennessee, the answer was obvious. The Commodores needed to beat Tennessee. Desperately. Otherwise their 2016 football season could come to a bowl-less conclusion, barring an academic reprieve for their five wins.
Just it had throughout all but seven of the 111 times the two schools met on the gridiron.
So Vanderbilt played like a desperate team and Tennessee played like a discombobulated team and the Commodores won 45-34 to become bowl eligible and quite likely erase any chance the Vols had to go to the Sugar Bowl for the first time since the close of the 1990 season.
In words that sounded eerily like something UT coach Butch Jones expects his players to say, Vanderbilt quarterback Kyle Shurmur noted at the close of his 416-yard passing night and two touchdown passes, "We just wanted to focus on winning today."
What new Tennessee defensive coordinator Bob Shoop - a former VU defensive coordinator under current Penn State head coach James Franklin - was focusing on is another matter. Against a Vanderbilt offense ranked last in the 14-team Southeastern Conference at the start of this game, the Vols surrendered 608, or 272 above VU's average.
As for points, Vanderbilt was 13th in the league entering this game (21.5) but somehow managed 24.5 more than that.
So UT heads to bowl season 8-4, same as last year, and of somewhat greater concern to Volniacs the nation over, a mere 3-4 down the stretch after a 5-0 start.
And it's not like they didn't have a few advantages.
The Commodores began this night as visitors in their own home, Vanderbilt Stadium seemingly 60 percent Tennessee Orange, and VU had reason upon reason to give in to its SEC brethren to the east, to be swept up in Tennessee's bid to reach the Sugar Bowl and finish with 10 wins for the first time since 2007.
And they appeared on the verge of doing just that when they fell into a 21-7 hole a mere 61 seconds into the second quarter. Nor did their prospects look terribly bright when the Vols went up 34-24 in the third period.
But then Vanderbilt did what VU teams rarely have done against UT when confronted with a deep hole from which to escape. They rallied. Big-time. They ran off 14 straight points to lead 38-34 early in the final period.
Hang on and the Commodores could go to a bowl for the first time since Derek Mason became the head coach three years ago. Hang on and it would be Vandyland rather than Volsville that would feel good about its team and its head coach heading to bowl season.
And when Tennessee kicker Aaron Medley boinked a field-goal attempt off the right upright with 6:46 to go to preserve that four-point lead, and Vanderbilt's Dallas Rivers then broke a big run to the UT 32 with less than five minutes to go, well, that John Jancek defense of a year ago, the one that was on the right side of a 53-28 Big Orange win, didn't look so bad.
Especially when Vanderbilt running back Ralph Webb went 28 yards for a touchdown to put the Commodores in front 45-34 with 4:06 to play.
Of course, in past years, any doubt about this game would have ended in its opening four minutes, when the Commodores - after facing a second-and-1 at the UT 44 - couldn't gain a yard in their next three snaps. Vandy loyalists could fairly argue that the officials completely botched the fourth-down replay, which seemed to show quite clearly that VU earned a first down.
But when the striped shirts refused to reverse the original call, it took the Vols only five plays to score a touchdown via Alvin Kamara's strong, swift legs.
A single reversal of fickle fortune such as that was often all it took to do in the Commodores against the Big Orange. One seeming wrong or slight was enough to unravel the Black and Gold mission, leading to such embarrassing finishes inside this same Vanderbilt Stadium as 39-10 (2006), 41-0 (1998) and 65-0 (1994).
Yet something shocking and surprising and inspiring happened to the Commodores after that early UT score. Something that was completely foreign to so many past UT-VU tussles. Out of nowhere, Vandy fought back, catching the Vols defense out of position on a quick snap, Shurmur hitting Bailey McElwain from 18 yards out to tie the game at 7-all.
And when the Vols later went up 21-7 on Kamara's second and third scores of the night, Vandy again came charging back to tie the game at 21-all. Then 24-all.
Then they rallied from that 34-24 hole to notch the biggest win of the Mason era.
You could say that this was a rivalry day, in every way, for the SEC's longtime doormats - Kentucky, Mississippi State, Vanderbilt - to rise up and shock the world. There was Big Blue from the Bluegrass, a 27-point underdog to Louisville, winning at the No. 11 Cardinals' Papa John's Stadium on a last-minute 47-yard field goal.
There were State's Bulldogs dropping by Ole Miss for the Egg Bowl and making scrambled eggs of the Rebels in a 55-20 rout.
Finally, there was Vanderbilt, showing its gold, showing its mettle as it has so rarely shown it against a team that had won 31 of the past 34 games against it.
Maybe it was all a case of need over want. Or maybe it was something bigger, especially inside Vanderbilt Stadium, where one must now wonder just how strong this Tennessee program really is after four years of Butch Jones. It's certainly not yet worthy of spending the holidays at the Sugar Bowl.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com