History of the SEC: Vanderbilt Commodores

As an academic institution, Vanderbilt University is among the nation’s leading four-year universities, and is particularly known for its engineering, law, business, and education schools (among others) along with the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center. The private research university was founded in 1873 and grew into what some consider the South’s equivalent to an Ivy League college.

Oh, it also has a football program, which for the most part has upheld the school’s high reputation for academics and has an exceedingly high graduation rate. In 2001, the Vanderbilt football program was recognized by the College Football Association for its 100% graduation rate, sharing the award with Notre Dame. It was the second time in five years that the Commodores achieved the distinction. Since 1990, the football program has been regularly recognized by the Coaches Association for graduating at least 70 percent of its players, which places it at the top of the SEC in that category, and for the 2021-22 academic year ist graduation success rate (GSR) was 97, the highest in the SEC for the seventh consecutive year.

Vanderbilt was also the home to maybe the greatest college football writer ever, Grantland Rice, who coined numerous phrases, including “It’s not whether you win or lose, its how you play the game.” Among his seemingly endless stream of poignant and famous statements about the game was also: “Due to its ingredients … courage, mental and physical condition, spirit and its terrific body contact which tends to sort the men from the boys … football remains one of the great games of all time.”

In terms of football, though, Vanderbilt frequently draws comparisons to the other private institutions that play in major conferences, like Northwestern in the Big Ten and Stanford in the Pac 12 before joining the Atlantic Coast Conference. In other words, success on the gridiron has been both fleeting, and, well, rare.

“There is no way you can be Harvard Monday though Friday and try and be Alabama on Saturday,” coach Art Guepe said.

Vanderbilt has never won a conference championship, or, obviously, a national title. It’s played in only a handful of bowl games, and has become a perennial cellar-dwelling program in the SEC, bottoming out in the 1960s when the Commodores averaged less than two wins per season (15-60-5) from 1960 to 1967.

Despite this, the school has advanced many players to the National Football League, including Billy Wade. The 1951 SEC Player of the Year completed 111 of 223 passes that season including 13 for touchdowns, and went on to help lead the Chicago Bears to the 1963 NFL Championship.

More recently, the list has includes the likes of offensive lineman Will Wolford, quarterback Jay Cutler, and defensive backs Corey Chavous and Corey Harris. Ther'es also been an impressive collection of pro linebackers including Shelton Quarles, Jamie Winborn, Hunter Hillenmeyer, and Matt Stewart. That didn’t include Jamie Duncan, who when he finished his career in 1997 had 425 career tackles, or Chris Gaines, who was once described by a Tennessee writer once as “sort of a Rambo on a leash.”

However, there was a time, before bowl games, that the Commodores were a national power and other teams were left in their wake, desperately scrambling to catch up. When Tennessee hired legendary coach Robert Neyland, it was with the primary objective of beating Vanderbilt, which dominated their early series and from 1915 to 1935 enjoyed 21 consecutive winning seasons.

The man Neyland was hired to try and best was Dan McGugin, who led the Commodores from 1904 to 1934 (though spent 1918 fulfilling military duty), compiling an incredible record of 197-55-19.

His first team, which might have been his best, went 9-0 and outscored opponents 474-4. The victims included Mississippi State (61-0), Ole Miss (69-0), Centre (97-0), Tennessee (22-0), Nashville (81-0) and Sewanee (27-0). McGugin’s teams were so dominating that the coach didn’t experience his fourth loss until his fifth season, when Vanderbilt scheduled both Michigan and Ohio State.

McGugin also didn’t mince words in expressing his coaching philosophy and ideology: 

“Don’t live on the fading memories of your forefathers. Go out and make your own records, and leave some memories for others to live by.”Dan McGugin

“Play for your own self-respect and the respect of your teammates.”

“How you fight is how you will be remembered.”

“Hit’em hard and carry’em to the ground. It reduces their enthusiasm.”

The coach also had a knack for pregame speeches. When Vanderbilt played at Yale in 1910, McGugin pointed out to his players that many of their grandfathers who fought in the Civil War were buried in the North, and killed by some of the grandfathers of their opponents that day. Vanderbilt pulled off a 0-0 tie, which was considered quite an accomplishment, but what McGugin didn’t tell his team was that his own grandfather had served under Yankee general William Sherman.

That team provided McGugin’s other unbeaten season. The 8-0-1 squad was led by lineman W.E. Metzger (nicknamed Frog), as Vanderbilt outscored the opposition 166-8. Sewanee scored six points and Ole Miss two.

But even before McGugin, there was William L. Dudley, considered the father of Vanderbilt football. The dean of the medical college was instrumental in organizing the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association in 1893, just three years after the school was issued a challenge by rival Peabody (now the University of Nashville) to play the inaugural game on Thanksgiving Day. With Elliott Jones serving as both coach and captain, Vanderbilt easily won 40-0.

The original Dudley Field, which is the current site of the law school, was christened on Oct. 21, 1892, with its first game a 22-4 victory against Tennessee. The field was replaced in 1922 by another facility with the same name which served the school until 1981, when, except for a section of metal bleachers seating 12,088, the entire stadium was demolished. Replacement Vanderbilt Stadium (39,773) took nine months to build and cost just $10.1 million.

In comparison, the latest renovations of what's now called FirstBank Stadium, began in 2023, were part of a $300 million initiative to improve athletic facilities on campus.

With McGugin the first coach to stay for more than three years (in his two seasons W.H. Watkins set an early standard with records of 6-1-1 in 1901 and 8-1 in 1902, thanks in part to halfback John Tigert, who was also the school’s first Rhodes Scholar), Vanderbilt suffered more than one loss in a season only twice between 1904 and 1912.

During the 1906 season opener, fullback/defensive back Owsley Manier scored three touchdowns and helped the Commodores accumulate a whopping 630 yards for a 28-0 victory against Kentucky. Manier scored five touchdowns against both Alabama (78-0) and Georgia Tech (37-6) en route to an 8-1 season in which the Commodores outscored the opposition 278-16.

In 1912, Vanderbilt set a school record that will almost certainly never be challenged when it scored 105 points against Bethel. Played in a downpour, which turned Dudley Field into a quagmire, the Commodores recorded 16 touchdown to go with nine conversions. Leading the scorers was Wilson Collins with five touchdowns, followed by Enoch Brown with three, and Lewie Hardage and Rabbi Robbins both with two (Robbins was the backup to quarterback Zach Curlin, but his game was better suited to the conditions).

The score could have been worse. Vanderbilt did pull most of its starters, and quarters were only nine minutes long during the first half. For the final two quarters the teams agreed to play just seven minutes each.

Reported The Tennessean: “Naturally, it makes the Commodores look pretty good on paper to say that they opened the season by breaking a record with only two week’s practice, much of which was done in very hot weather and before a number of the varsity men had arrived. Nevertheless, it was not a great victory. Bethel was lamentably weak on defense on the offense they did come within hailing distance of a first down. But for all that, some of those Bethel men, notably Captain Cody, played gritty football. Their main trouble was lack of unity in action. They were not well trained along football lines, although physically, they seemed never to be in distress.”

Actually, Vanderbilt did reach the century mark twice more. The following week, it beat Maryville 100-3, followed by Rose Polytechnic (54-0), and Georgia (40-0). The Commodores finished the season 8-1-1 with a loss to Harvard (9-3) and tied Auburn (7-7), but it outscored opponents 391-18.

In 1915, Vanderbilt destroyed Henderson-Brown 100-0 during an impressive 9-1 season that saw the Commodores shut out eight opponents and close with a 27-3 victory against Sewanee. The “point-a-minute” team scored 514 points in 510 minutes, averaging 51 points per game, while only giving up 3.8. The lone loss was to Virginia, 35-10.

Running behind future basketball coach Josh Cody, who would help Vanderbilt score 1,099 points in 35 games during his four-year career at tackle, the team was led by versatile ball-carrier Irby “Rabbit” Curry from 1914 to 1916. His final season, the Commodores went 7-1-1, including an 86-0 pounding of Southwestern (La.).

Upon graduating, Curry volunteered for service during World War I, and after completing Ground School was assigned to Flying School. On August 18, 1918, he was shot down over France near Chateau Thierry and killed.

McGugin took his death hard, but waited to invoke Curry’s memory until a pregame speech in 1921. According to 50 Years of Vanderbilt Football by Fred Russell and Maxwell Benson, he said the following before Vanderbilt played heavily-favored Texas in Dallas:

“You are about to be put to an ordeal which will show the stuff that’s in you. What a glorious chance you have. Every one of you is going to fix his status for all time in the minds and hearts of his teammates today. How you fight is what you will be remembered by. If any shirk, the Lord pity him; he will be degraded in the hearts of the rest as long as they live.

“Man is a curious kind of a critter. You will all doubtless eat and have comforts and butt around for a good many days, but during the next hour you must forget yourselves absolutely. You are to hurl yourselves like demons with the fury of hell on the crowd that has come here to humiliate us. The man worthwhile is the man who can rise away above and beyond himself in the face of a great task.

“I am glad Mr. Curry is here. Some of you knew Rabbit. We felt toward him the tenderness a mother feels towards her own little boy. He had a little slender body; he weighed only 128 pounds, but he had a heart as big as that loving cup over there on the mantel. He was modest; his life was absolutely clean; and what a fighter he was. His life was a great contribution to Vanderbilt _ traditionally to our athletic traditions. The influence of his spirit will always abide. He always wanted to play with Vanderbilt against Texas. His body is resting only a few miles south of here; but his spirit is hovering above us now. Some of these days I want to see his likeness looking down on our athletic fields. I am glad his father is here so that he can see, face-to-face, how we regard his son.

“There is one thing that makes me sick at heart. I heard repeatedly before we left Nashville that this Vanderbilt team, this crowd of men into whose faces I now look, might win from Texas if it would only fight. Has anybody the right to imply such an insult? And, if so, when before now could such a thing be said of men from Tennessee? How about Pickett’s men who moved out of the wood and exposed their breasts and faces to be shattered and torn as they moved up that slope? And how about The Tennesseans of the Thirtieth Division, who broke the Hindenburg line _ a task even greater because it was accompanied by so much mud and misery. All but a few here are Tennesseans and the rest have elected to be educated here. You are a part of us and you must uphold the traditions of Vanderbilt and Tennessee.

“Who in the devil started all of this bunk about the Texas team? Who thinks they are unbeatable? They say that they have the greatest team in their history and perhaps this is true. They say Vanderbilt never had a team which could defeat theirs of this year, and that is not true. Texas has no shield like ours. We have some scars on it, but there are a lot of stars there, too. Texas has no such athletic tradition and history.

“They say the climate is against us. That is not true. The change should do us good. This light, pure air will help us.”

Vanderbilt went out into the pure air and won 20-0, handing the Longhorns their only defeat of the season. In turn, the Commodores finished 7-0-1 and wouldn’t sustain a loss for almost two years.

After the new stadium was built in 1922, the original Dudley Field was rechristened Curry Field. Meanwhile, the inaugural game at new Dudley Field was against none other than Michigan, coached by McGugin’s biggest nemesis, Fielding Yost, who just happened to be his brother-in-law and the two had played together for the Wolverines. Yost’s team had given the Commodores their only loss in 1905, 1906, 1907, and 1911.

The game came down to a crucial fourth-and-goal at the 1 when a Vanderbilt player was able to push off the goalpost to stop the Michigan ball-carrier to preserve the 0-0 tie. Wrote a reporter from Detroit: “Michigan was lucky to escape with their lives.”

Led by the passing tandem of quarterback Jess Neely and receiver Lynn “The Blond Bear” Bomar, the 1922 team finished 8-0-1 and outscored opponents 117-16. But during Bomar’s senior season in 1924, he suffered a brain hemorrhage from a blow to the chin. For a while he was paralyzed below the waist and for days doctors didn’t know if he would live. Bomar recuperated, and while he never played again, he returned to the bench for the remainder of the season.

When the Commodores traveled to Minnesota, which was coming off a victory against Illinois and Red Grange, and defeated the Gophers 16-0, the November 23, 1924 issue of The Tennessean boasted the headline: “Vanderbilt Wins First Time in North,”

According to reports, McGugin told his team prior to the game: “Men, those people in the stands out there haven’t heard of Southern football. When they think about the South, they think about the Civil War. They think about pain, suffering and death. Many people have no idea of what Southern manhood is all about. Today, we can show them. When your mothers looked on you sleeping in your cradles twenty years ago, they wondered when the time would come when you could bring honor to the South. That time has arrived.”

Vanderbilt returned home the following week and lost to Sewanee 16-0. Ironically, the 5-3-2 season was one of McGugin’s worst, but the Commodores came back in 1926 to finish 8-1, with five shutouts. The lone loss was to former Vanderbilt assistant coach Wallace Wade and Alabama, 19-7, with the Crimson Tide going on to successfully defend its national championship at the Rose Bowl.

A 10-game winning streak came to a close Week 4 of the 1927 season, 13-6 to Texas, but quarterback Bill Spears had touchdown runs of 88 and 77 yards to lead a 32-0 victory against Tulane, helping spark Vanderbilt to an 8-1-2 finish.

Raved Rice about Spears: “He is the fastest of the nation's quarterbacks, and one of the most remarkable offensive backs to be seen in college football in years.”

The following year, end Dick Abernathy had two touchdown catches to lead a 20-0 season-opening victory against Chattanooga. Later in the season, he blocked a punt that was recovered in the end zone for a touchdown as Vanderbilt got even with Texas, 13-12. The Commodores finished 8-2, losing 19-7 to Georgia Tech, but also had a rare defeat to Tennessee, 6-0.

Arguably Vanderbilt’s last two dominating seasons under McGugin’s direction came in 1929 and 1930, finishing 7-2 and 8-2, respectively. But by the time the SEC came into existence in 1933, many of the other SEC programs had caught and/or surpassed Vanderbilt on the playing field. In 1935, when Ray Morrison replaced McGugin, who retired after 30 seasons due to health reasons (he died in 1936 at the age of 56), the team’s second-place finish (7-3 overall, 5-1 SEC) set a mark in the standings that the Commodores have been unable to equal since.

Led by the “Iron Man” Carl Hinkle, who was named the SEC’s Most Valuable Player, Vanderbilt posted a 7-2 record in 1937, and barely missed a Rose Bowl invitation and chance to play for the national championship. With the bid on the line against Alabama in the season finale, a field goal propelled the Crimson Tide to a 9-7 victory.

“The drama of sport is a big part of the drama of life and the scope of that drama is endless."Grantland Rice

Although Hinkle, a center, missed out on the Rose Bowl, during World War II he served as a pilot and won the Distinguished Flying Cross with two Oak Leaf Clusters, the Air Force Medal of Commendation, France's Croix de Guerre and a Presidential Citation Unit with Oak Leaf Clusters.

Incidentally, one of the more interesting plays of the 1937 season occurred when tackle Greer Ricketson scored the only touchdown of the game against LSU on the hidden-ball trick, for a 7-0 victory.

Red Sanders returned to his alma mater in 1940 (he eventually left for UCLA) and it took until James Franklin in 2012-13 for a coach to top his eight-win seasons of 1941 and 1948. One of his assistant coaches, in charge of the offensive line, was Paul “Bear” Bryant, who was on the Commodores’ sideline for one of their biggest upsets against national powerhouse Alabama, ranked seventh.

Vanderbilt held on for a 7-0 victory in Nashville en route to an 8-2 season, but didn’t play in a bowl game. Meanwhile, the Crimson Tide went on to finish 9-2, defeated Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl and was named the national champion by Deke Houlgate’s mathematical rankings system.

On October 7, 1950, Vanderbilt spoiled Alabama’s season again, this time 27-22 against the No. 12 Crimson Tide in Mobile. For most of that season, Bucky Curtis led the nation in receiving. His 791 receiving yards, on 27 catches, set an SEC record and the Commodores finished 7-4.

“Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing,” Sanders once said (and obviously rubbed off on Bryant). He was once also quoted saying: “The worst mistake a coach can make is to get caught without material.”

When Bill Edwards became head coach in 1949, Vanderbilt was essentially a .500 program. Though the Commodores were competitive, and reached No. 13 two weeks after defeating Alabama in 1950, only to lose 31-27 to Florida, they were becoming accustomed to the underdog label.

For example, during the 1951 season, Vanderbilt played No. 3 Georgia Teach to a tough 8-7 loss, and closed the season with a 35-27 defeat to No. 1 Tennessee, resulting in a 6-5 season.

“I felt like a Yankee and a stranger when I first came here, but I guess I’ve been reconstructed,” said New Jersey native Bob Werckle, a standout tackle (1947, 1949-51). “Vanderbilt is the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”

Guepe took the helm in 1953 to start a 10-year reign that saw some significant firsts for the Commodores. Vanderbilt played its first night football game at Dudley Field on September 25, 1954 against Baylor University. Evangelist Billy Graham, who held his crusade at the stadium earlier that year, donated the permanent lights, but Baylor rushed for 312 yards compared to Vanderbilt’s 129 to win 25-19.

Though it got off to an uninspiring 1-2 start in 1955, with the victory against Alabama, 21-6, Vanderbilt had a three-game winning streak when it pulled off a 34-0 upset against No. 17 Kentucky to suddenly put the Commodores in the running for a potential bowl invitation. Despite a 20-14 season-ending loss to Tennessee, the 8-3 record brought the highly-coveted bid, and a matchup against No. 8 Auburn in the Gator Bowl.

But as if fate was playing a cruel joke against the Commodores, their quarterback, Don Orr, dislocated his right elbow against the Volunteers and no one knew how he would hold up against the Tigers, considered the SEC’s best defensive team that season.

“Orr hadn’t hit a lick in practice,” Guepe said after the game. “We didn't know for sure his elbow had recovered from the injury in the final season game against Tennessee. I was going to start Tommy Harkins at quarterback if we kicked off, and said so to the team. Something like a tear came up in Orr’s eye so I said to him, ‘Are you ready?’ He said he was, so I said, ‘Get in there.’”

In front of 36,000 fans, Orr set up Vanderbilt’s first touchdown, a 7-yard touchdown pass to Joe Stephenson, by recovering one of five Auburn fumbles. He added two short touchdown runs for the 25-14 upset.

For the most part, the last 65-plus years have not seen much glory befallen on the Commodores, whose fans have had to hold out hope for major upsets and enjoyed very few.

But there have been some epic splashes of success, including the following:

• November 22, 1969 was a record-setting day for the Commodores, who defeated Davidson 63-8. The 798 total yards remains a school record, but at the time it was both an NCAA and SEC record (Alabama eventually broke it in 1973 against Virginia Tech). Other single-game school records established that day were most pass completions (27), most yards passing (368), most rush-pass plays (99), most first downs rushing (27), most first downs (40, which remains an SEC record), and fewest rushes allowed (16).

• In 1974, under the direction of coach Steve Sloan, Vanderbilt pulled off a 24-10 victory against No. 8 Florida for a 3-1 start to the season, and after finishing the season 7-3-1 (with the tie against Tennessee, 21-21) received an invitation to play Texas Tech in the Peach Bowl. With Mark Adams making both of his field goals and the defense blocking a field-goal attempt after the offense fumbled early in the fourth quarter, the teams played to a 6-6 tie. The Commodores came back the following season, Fred Pancoast’s first as coach, to win its last four games, including 17-14 against Tennessee, to finish 7-4.

• On September 10, 1977, Vanderbilt nearly pulled off the biggest upset in the program’s history when it opened at No. 1 Oklahoma. When an official, supposedly incorrectly, ruled that the Commodores did not recover a fumble in the end zone, the Sooners were able to eek out a 25-23 victory. Vanderbilt won its next game 3-0 against Wake Forest, but then lost seven straight en route to a 2-9 season.

• On November 18, 1978, Frank Mordica had 321 rushing yards against Air Force to set both a school and SEC record. Vanderbilt won 41-27, but finished the season 2-9.

After a 1-2 start in 1982, the Commodores turned things around under coach George MacIntyre, winning seven of its next eight games, including against No. 14 Florida (31-29) and Tennessee. Against the Volunteers, Whit Taylor completed 24 of 41 passes for 391 yards and led the deciding 84-yard drive in the fourth quarter for a 28-21 victory.

Returning to the postseason, the Commodores were paired against Air Force in the Hall of Fame Bowl, a game that would break 33 bowl records and tie eight. Taylor passed for 452 yards (second in school history to his 464 yards against Tennessee in 1981) and running back Norman Jordan caught 20 passes for 173 yards and scored three touchdowns, but with 336 rushing yards, the Falcons came back from an 11-point deficit to win the shootout 36-28.

It had to last for a while as Vanderbilt didn't play in another bowl game until 2008. Gerry DiNardo’s teams came close in the early 1990s, but never managed more than five wins, one short of the required minimum. The Commodores upset No. 17 Georgia 27-25 in 1991 (one week after losing to No. 24 Auburn 24-22) and No. 25 Ole Miss 31-9 in 1992.

Vanderbilt opened the 1996 season by playing No. 6 Notre Dame, but lost a tight game 14-7. After his offense fumbled seven times, Irish coach Lou Holtz suggested to his ball carriers that: “You take the ball, you put it in the proper position, and then you squeeze the ball until you hear the ball go, ‘psshhhhh.’”

“Trying isn’t good enough,” Commodores coach Rod Dowhower said. “We’ve got to close.”

Instead, when the Commodores finished 2-9, the only thing that closed was Dowhower’s two-year reign as head coach.

Although Vanderbilt finished 5-6 in 1999, the season did provide two of the more memorable games in modern history.

On September 11, the Commodores were trailing Northern Illinois 28-3 in the second half when they rallied for a fierce comeback. Quarterback Greg Zolman led three touchdown drives including one capped by a 61-yard touchdown pass to M.J. Garrett on a slant route. After closing to within 31-26, Jimmy Williams returned a punt 65 yards for the game-winning touchdown and 34-31 victory.

 Just a week later, Zolman’s touchdown pass to Todd Yoder with 49 seconds remaining tied the game against Ole Miss. After holding the Rebels to a field goal in the first extra stanza, tight end Elliott Carson caught a touchdown pass for the 37-34 victory.

In 2002, Bobby Johnson, who had led Furman to the NCAA I-AA national championship game, took over as Vanderbilt’s head coach and immediately promised that the Commodores’ days of swearing off the postseason were behind them. That’s because he installed a no cursing policy within the team.

But Johnson also brought optimism, which paid off in 2005 when Vanderbilt did the next-best thing to making a bowl game, it knocked Tennessee out of bowl contention to end its 16-year postseason streak. Earl Bennett’s 5-yard touchdown pass from Jay Cutler with 1:11 remaining provided the 28-24 score and sent the Commodores celebrating. Vanderbilt (5-6) hadn’t won at Neyland Stadium since 1975, and its overall losing streak to UT dating to 1982 was the second-longest between major teams in Division I-A football (trailing only Notre Dame’s 42-game string against Navy).

“This is the greatest feeling I've felt in my career,” said senior linebacker Moses Osemwegie, who made 16 tackles in the season finale. Cutler, who set 20 school passing records during his career, completed 27 of 39 passes for 315 yards and three touchdowns, while Bennett had 14 catches for 167 yards.

“To turn the corner, you’ve got to believe, and I’m not saying we’ve turned the corner, but our guys are starting to believe,” Johnson said.

It led to a winning season in 2008, and Vanderbilt's first appearance in the AP Top 25 since 1984, climbing up to No. 13 before falling back. A 16-14 win against Boston College in the 2008 Music City Bowl resulted in a 7-6 record that was celebrated.

So was Franklin's 2012 team that finished No. 23, marking just the second time in school history that Vanderbilt ended the season in the AP Top 25, and 2013 was the third at No. 24. First the first ever the Commodores enjoyed back-to-back bowl wins, 38-24 over North Carolina State in the Music City Bowl, and 41-24 against Houston in the Birmingham Bowl.

Derek Mason took Vanderbilt to two bowl games during his stretch as head coach from 2014-20, but Vanderbilt didn't notch another bowl win until 2024, when the Commodores returned to Birmingham and defeated Georgia Tech, 35-27. The first winning season since Franklin was capped by a stunning 40-35 victory over No. 1 Alabama that had fans storming the field and ripping down a goalpost that was eventually tossed into the Cumberland River.

"Games like this change your life," quarterback Diego Pavia said.

It was Vanderbilt's first win against Alabama in 40 years, and the program's first victory against an opponent atop the AP Top 25 at No. 1. Combined with a last-second loss to No. 7 Missouri, a 27-24 loss to No. 5 Texas, and a 35-27 win against Georgia Tech in the Birmingham Bowl, and Commodores fans were hoping they were enjoying the beginning of a new dawn in Vanderbilt football.

"This is the dream, right here," head coach Clark Lea.

Three things that stand out about Vanderbilt football:

1. The Commodores Nickname