Vandy Over LSU: Would It Be a Total Shocker?

Vanderbilt thrives as an underdog, and that’s where the team finds itself again this weekend against the 14-point favorite LSU Tigers. You could say the Commodores are used to the position seeing as that’s generally the role they’ve had in the Southeastern Conference over the years.

But every year since 2005, Vanderbilt has surprised a favored foe at least once, and on that team's home turf no less.

Under eighth-year head coach Bobby Johnson, Vanderbilt has beaten all but three SEC teams at least once, including a 28-24 victory engineered by Jay Cutler at arch-rival Tennessee in 2005 and a last-second stunner over then-No. 16 Georgia in 2006.

Don’t forget Vandy’s long-awaited win over the Ol’ Ball Coach in 2007 when the Commodores smothered his then-No. 6 Gamecocks in Columbia (their first win over him in 15 tries), and followed it up with wins last year at eventual Cotton Bowl champion Ole Miss, as well as divisional foe Kentucky.

Now the Commodores have a shot to ruin another weekend for a tough opponent, getting their first shot in Baton Rouge since 2004. Their last game in Death Valley was a 24-7 loss, and none of the players on the team currently were around for that one.

Johnson was, and his memories of it aren’t particularly fond. But he used that experience as a teaching tool for Vanderbilt this week heading into the game.

“I told the team this, we had a chance to win that game, but I don’t think our team (in 2004) believed that we could win,” Johnson said. “We had several opportunities to make the game a whole lot closer. We just sort of curled up.”

This isn’t a group that curls up any more though.

The culture change in Vanderbilt since that dismal season has become evident to not only everyone in Commodore Nation, but to the rest of the SEC, who can now pencil in Vandy as an automatic win at their own peril.

Now this is a team that believes it can win against anybody and has the personnel to back up what would have been an absurd assertion just a few years ago.

The bigger and louder the crowds, the better. It just presents more opposing fans to silence.

I asked Johnson what he thought has made Vanderbilt into a group of road warriors.

“We think it’s motivating,” Johnson said. “It gets our guys fired up. They like playing in front of big crowds. I think it’s the attitude we have going into these games.”

Redshirt senior center Bradley Vierling personifies that attitude.

“We thrive on it,” Vierling said. “We thrive on going to these big SEC road games and shutting the crowd up and having some fun and getting the W.”

They know it’s going to be noisy, though. The 92,400 capacity stadium has a well-deserved reputation as one of the loudest in the nation, and for a conference opener, there’s no reason to think it won’t be its usual screamfest.

Redshirt sophomore quarterback Larry Smith, 2-0 as a starter, will be making his first college start in a hostile environment and will have to be barking out signals pretty loudly to overcome the noise.

“Pretty excited right now,” he said. “I’ve played in rough environments before, but hopefully I won’t lose my voice.”

The coaches were more vociferous than usual at practice on Wednesday, particularly in regards to tightening up kinks on special teams, the one unit that didn’t perform well in last week’s 45-0 win over Western Carolina.

The offense, however, racked up more yards in a game than it had in three years, and the defense pitched its first shutout in nearly a decade.

LSU’s "a whole different animal" though, as one Vandy defensive player put it.

Vandy’s an underdog for a reason; the Tigers are an excellent football team with outstanding speed on both sides of the ball, and it will take near-perfect execution by the Commodores to come away with another big victory.

But would a victory in Death Valley this weekend be such a complete stunner? LSU’s defense didn’t look like world-beaters against Washington, allowing nearly 500 yards. More importantly, Vanderbilt isn’t going to roll over like it did five years ago. This situation might have scared a Commodore football player. Now he welcomes it.

Should the Commodores pull the upset, it might be a stunner to the rest of the nation, but anyone who has been looking closely at the upgrade in talent, and swagger, this program has seen in recent years shouldn’t be too surprised if Vanderbilt adds another high-profile squad to its list of victims.