Psyched for Vandy football! (And a little psycho, too.) My Commodores are now 7-1!

By CHUCK OFFENBURGER

DES MOINES, Iowa, Oct. 26, 2025 — We Vanderbilt football fans have spent most of our lives rooting for losing football teams, as you who follow the college game know.

But after a stunning 17-10 victory over Missouri Saturday at Vanderbilt— and just beyond the midpoint of the 2025 season — our Commodores have a 7-1 record, have already qualified for a post-season bowl, and are rated in the Top Ten in the nation by the Associated Press.

It’s Vandy’s first appearance in the Top Ten since 1947 — the year most of us in the VU Class of ’69 were born!

We are being led by our quarterback Diego Pavia, whom I think we purchased from the state of New Mexico, as I understand it. And now he’s a leading candidate for football’s Heisman Trophy!

Photo from ESPN’s TV coverage of Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia diving over the goal line with the winning touchdown Saturday against Missouri.

A week ago, when we beat perennial powerhouse LSU 31-24 at our FirstBank Stadium in Nashville, Vandy alumni everywhere went nuts.

Henry Hecht, my classmate in New York City who is a retired big-time sportswriter and seldom gushes about sports, erupted.

“Raise your hand if you were crying watching the players swaying together during the school song,” he wrote post-game on our Vandy email chain, adding three exclamation points (!!!). And a little later, he added, “I’ve been waiting 60 years for this!”

And a whole lot of us are probably in happy tears again now after this heart stopper of a win over Missouri, which came into the game with only one loss. The Tigers completed a pass almost to the goal line as time expired. A touchdown there might have tied the game.

The exciting MU-VU match-up was so anticipated that highly-recruited ESPN “College Game Day” show came to Nashville, with three hours of live television coverage Saturday morning from the Vanderbilt campus.

Vandy’s head coach Clark Lea on the “College Game Day” show pre-game.

That show has a line-up of a half-dozen well-known, former football players and coaches who do analysis and predictions for games across the nation. For the Mizzou-Vandy game, the experts, plus the week’s “celebrity picker” Nate Bargatze, a Nashville-based comedian who is a lifelong Vandy fan, nearly all predicted a Commodores victory.

Another good sign for Vandy during the show, I thought, occurred during a segment known as “Pat McAfee’s Kicking Contest.” McAfee, the show’s primary host, was a former kicker in professional football, and he sponsors a weekly contest that has a student at the host school (not a member of the football team) attempting a 33-yard field goal. The huge, raucous crowds for “Game Day” pack tight around the kicker, and that’s bound to make them nervous

But on Saturday, Vanderbilt sophomore Tyler Hwang, a chemical engineering and economics major from Massachusetts who was a high school soccer player and football kicker, split the uprights with “the best kick we’ve ever had” in the contest, McAfee crowed. And he wrote out the souvenir check awarding young Hwang $500,000 that had been building in the “Game Day” jackpot!

McAfee hugged the Vandy student and told him, “Man, you should be kicking for a football team somewhere!”

Vandy fans campaigning during “College Game Day” for their quarterback Diego Pavia’s chance of winning the Heisman Trophy.

Like many sports fans, I’m a little superstitious. And pre-game omens in my own life were more concerning.

I’ve written before about my 41-year-old Vanderbilt ball cap, which I’ve worn through several College World Series games in Omaha and several past Vandy football games, too. When I put it on last Monday morning, Oct. 20, to wear to coffee and boast about the victory over LSU, the plastic clasp on the back of my treasured cap, broke!

I sought advice from my wife Mary Riche, asking her if she thought perhaps a shoe repair shop could fix the plastic clasp. I said I was worried whether the cap, which is worn and fragile, would fall apart if handled roughly.

Iowa farm girl that she is, Mary had a better idea how to fix it myself. “I think you could put that clasp back together with duct tape,” she said. “And that would probably be more in keeping with the history of the cap.”

Indeed it is!

The 41-year-old Vanderbilt ball cap ready for more big games!

I’ve also shared with you readers that I have a pair of Vanderbilt boxer shorts, a gift from Mary, that I wear for almost all big games. Of course, I had them on during the victory over LSU.Then I threw them in our laundry basket, which is made of strong plastic.

A couple days later, when I still had not done my laundry, I discovered that when cool weather arrived and we turned on the wall heating unit, the laundry basket was pushed up against it. The plastic melted, dribbled on to the waistband of my big game underpants, then cooled — and I had a problem.

So while I watched “College Game Day” Saturday, I tried steaming the waistband. But that did not free it from the hardened plastic.

I resorted to a sort of exorcism. I used a scissors to cut-away a portion of the waistband, and had my big game underpants on by kickoff against Missouri.