If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia in the two weeks since the 4-2 Commodores knocked off then-No. 1 Alabama, an upset that sent shock waves through the college football world, it’s that he thrives on being an underdog and relishes every opportunity to prove skeptics wrong.

Want examples? There are plenty dating to his high school days in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but here are a couple from just the last two weeks:

• Listed as 22.5-point favorites in Las Vegas odds, visiting Alabama had a 95.8% chance to win, according to predictions on the Data Skrive betting model’s moneyline implied probability and posted on FoxSports.com. The Commodores dominated from start to finish and rolled the Tide 40-35. In that game, Pavia completed 16 of 20 pass attempts for 252 yards and two touchdowns and ran for 56 yards.

• Host Kentucky was a 12.5-point favorite and had an 84.0% to win, the same source reported. Again, Vandy never trailed in the 20-13 triumph and Pavia went 15-of-18 for 143 yards and two TDs while rushing for 53 yards.

In improving to 2-1 in the Southeastern Conference standings, Pavia became the first quarterback in SEC history to throw for at least two touchdowns in back-to-back wins with a completion rate of 80% and 50 rushing yards.

So much for artificial intelligence. Or smart money.

Asked after the Kentucky game about Vandy being double-digit underdogs in Vegas, Pavia smiled and deadpanned.

“We were 20-something underdogs (against Alabama), and I’ve been an underdog my whole life so that stuff doesn’t faze me,” the graduate transfer from New Mexico State says. “It’s a lot of fun when you win a football game. That’s probably the reason why I do it, to see a smile on people’s faces.

“So I’m delighted to be on this football team (and) for Vanderbilt as a whole, just to accept me and my family. I know they’re crazy but the fans love it.”

The thick-skinned answer contradicts the obvious conclusion … “that stuff” bothers him enough to mask his emotions publicly and fuels an inner drive to disprove doubters.

“He brings a certain attitude to the Vanderbilt team that was lacking until now. Maybe confidence is a better word. He brings a confidence to the football program that I don’t think has been there recently,” says fourth-year coach Clark Lea, who returned to his alma mater in 2021 after three seasons as Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator.

VU quarterback Diego Pavia celebrates a touchdown with offensive lineman Gunnar Hansen during the second half of the Commodores’ 40-35 upset win against No. 1-ranked Alabama, the school’s first vs. a top-ranked team.

-- Photo By George Walker Iv | Ap

“I don’t know that there’s anything else I can say about Diego’s mentality and leadership other than just to say he’s so committed and devoted and disciplined in his process. One of the things that I hope that everyone knows is as much swagger as he carries himself with – and we love that, I love the confidence he plays with – but as much as that confidence comes out, that dude dedicates himself in the week to being prepared.”

After defeating Bama, Pavia said the rest of the college football world might be “in shock, but internally we knew what we could do. We feel like any week that we focus on ourselves, Vanderbilt football can only beat Vanderbilt football and that’s the reality of it.

“I love Vandy. That’s what I came here for – I came here to win big football games. Our ultimate goal is to go to the College Football Playoff. We want a chance at the national championship just like everyone else does,” Pavia continues. “(Alabama) was just a step in the way and we’ve just got to keep getting better. … On any given Saturday, anything’s possible.”

The legend of Pavia

While long-suffering fans were hopeful that Pavia would live to the hype, there’s no way were they prepared for what Vandy has accomplished in such a short span.

Commodore faithful got a hint of what might be possible in the season opener when Vandy defeated Virginia Tech 34-27 in overtime and then improved to 2-0 with a 55-0 rout of Alcorn State. But back-to-back close losses at Georgia State and Missouri by a combined seven points had some muttering an oft-heard refrain: “Same old Vandy.”

Then Pavia and the Commodores turned the college football world upside down. Like Alabama, the rest of us were completely caught off-guard by what transpired that humid evening at FirstBank Stadium.

Pavia’s play and Vandy’s utter domination of an Alabama program that has won 16 national championships have turned him into something of a folk hero for Vandy fans. It was Vandy’s first victory over a No. 1 team in 61 previous attempts and only the Commodores’ third win over Alabama since 1956 (not including a retroactive forfeit). Those on-field wins came in 1969 at home and in 1984 in Tuscaloosa.

Watson Brown and Doug Mathews, who each threw a touchdown in that 1969 victory at Dudley Field, say Pavia is the most exciting player Vanderbilt has had in a long time.

Pavia and offensive coordinator Tim Beck (center) also teamed at New Mexico State.

-- Photo Courtesy Vanderbilt Athletics

“A lot of stuff I thought fell into place. But I think this (Alabama) win was even bigger than ours,” Brown, the team’s quarterback in 1969 and head coach from 1986-90, said one recent afternoon as a guest on the George Plaster Show on 94.9 The Fan. “And he goes down in history. He’ll be remembered for this game the rest of his life.”

Mathews, the 1969 team’s halfback and defensive coordinator at both Tennessee and Vandy who now hosts a couple of sports talk shows on 104.5-FM, says Pavia “is cementing his place in the lore of Vanderbilt history. It has to rank up there with the all-time great individual performances for a Vanderbilt football player and certainly up there with one of the best performances ever. And not only a great individual performance, but that was a great performance … a total team win, without question.”

The sudden burst of attention has made Pavia a hot commodity on the name, image, likeness (NIL) marketplace. Following the win over Alabama, according to reports, he landed a deal with fast casual chicken restaurant Raising Cane’s and posted his agent’s phone number on social media.

And it raised Vanderbilt’s stock among supporters, media and college football in general.

“I do not take for granted that the college football world is focused on Vanderbilt football and our performance (against Alabama). … This is the reason I came here,” Lea says. “This is what I wanted to occur within our program, is to put performances together that inspired people to take interest.

“For so long, we haven’t commanded the interest of the college football world. I think now people realize that we are somewhere on the way to doing something that is special and we get to determine as a team what happens next. That’s where we have to be so disciplined internally with where we again put our attention to our focus moving forward.”

From New Mexico State to VU

While so many plaudits are directed toward Pavia, he credits Lea, who completely revamped his coaching staff and brought in 57 other players besides Pavia through the transfer portal.

And the Land of Enchantment has been fertile ground for populating the current Vanderbilt team, both with players and coaches. Players who also transferred from New Mexico State include Blaze Berlowitz (quarterback), Eli Stowers (tight end) and Moni Jones (running back).

“There’s something bigger out there for us that we want,” Pavia says of the Commodores.

-- Photograph Provided

But it’s the coaching staff that’s also gotten a boost from former NMSU Aggies. Lea hired five coaches away from New Mexico State – head coach (Jerry Kill, chief consultant to Lea and senior offensive adviser), offensive coordinator (Tim Beck) and three other assistants, Ghaali Muhammad-Lankford (running backs), Melvin Rice (safeties) and Garrett Altman (quarterbacks).

“The whole team, we’re all around him. We’re behind him and we’re just here. He leads the way, and we just attack it, what he has planned for us. Coach Lea’s a great coach,” Pavia says. “He just needs people to believe in him and to keep believing in him. The SEC is tough, and that’s just reality. You’ve got to come every single week to play or you’ll get beat. And that’s just the reality.”

SEC Network football analyst Jordan Rodgers, who played two years at Vanderbilt and led the Commodores to a 2012 Music City Bowl victory over North Carolina State, calls the current run of success “great validation” for the program Lea is building.

After his first three teams struggled to a combined 9-27 record, Lea convinced administrators at the SEC’s only private school to commit to the transfer portal and NIL to build the program.

“I’ve been around Clark since he first took the job, and he did it the right way. But even when you do it the right way, sometimes it doesn’t always mean that you get the result that you were hoping for,” Rodgers says. “So to do something like this further validates his decision not only to take over the D-coordinator job, but to revamp the entire offensive staff and go into the portal for some of the key players, as well.”

Rodgers, Brown and Mathews say agree that the option Kill he ran for two years at New Mexico State and now at Vanderbilt have made all the difference.

“It’s a great scheme, and Diego Pavia is the type of playmaking quarterback that you need at Vanderbilt … to fit that scheme,” Rodgers says. “But to me, it’s who he is that is so much more important. That’s the reason that you saw that result on the field.”

Brown calls the scheme “old-timey military academy football, except it’s done in the (shot)gun instead of under the center. That’s exactly what Vanderbilt’s doing.

“The way you win at Vanderbilt is you’ve got to run option football there. … It’s keeping them in every game,” Brown adds. “They’re keeping the ball.

“When somebody does not know how to defend the option, it’s ugly. And that’s what happened Saturday. Alabama had no clue how to defend that stuff.”

Mathews calls Pavia “an excellent quarterback” whose understanding of the system makes him dangerous on every snap.

“You certainly can teach fundamentals and things like that, but that’s one of those things that you just innately have. He appears to have that. He’s played well this whole year. It wasn’t just that one ballgame.

“He can run the ball. He is a really good passer. That touch that he put on that fourth-and-one touchdown pass was beautiful. He laid it up and let the receiver run underneath it. Those are just things that you feel and he’s got a feel for playing that position,” Mathews adds.

Perfect game, perfect ending

Following the stunning win against Alabama, delirious Vandy fans stormed the field, tore down the goal post and carried it on their shoulders all the way down West End/Broadway to finally dump it into the Cumberland River. The SEC summarily fined Vandy $100,000 – a penalty many Vandy fans would consider well worth the once-in-a-lifetime celebration.

That reaction, plus all the other plaudits that followed, only add to the mystique of that win and what possibly awaits. Vanderbilt communications professor John Koch has several Commodores players in his classes and says he’s never seen them so confident.

“Before the season started and even during the season, it felt like something special was happening with the football team when I would talk to football players I have in class,” says Koch, a senior lecturer and director of debate whose areas of interest are public memory and the intersection of political culture, rhetoric and sports.

“So I think (beating Alabama) was the culmination of all that their breakthrough moment. I think they’ve been waiting for their breakthrough moment. I don’t think there could be any bigger breakthrough moment than beating Alabama – especially with Alabama being the No. 1 team in the country.

“You can see how well his teammates respond to him. I think he brings energy to the team. Even before this Alabama win, he always brought unpredictability. Something can always happen when he’s on the field and it doesn’t feel like Vanderbilt is ever out of it.”

Lea knows how the emotional impact of Vandy’s stunning win extends far beyond the Nashville sports community, making the Commodores one of college football’s feel-good stories of the season.

“It was a lot of fun to have a great celebration of our program, with our team, but also our community,” Lea beams. “Football – college football in particular – is something that still is so unifying and still so special, such a special part of our cultural fabric.

“And for this program to have created such a positive ripple in Nashville and again in the Vanderbilt community and to have that ripple and that energy extend is really special and meaningful to me.”

After being double-digit underdogs in the two most recent games, early odds for the Ball State game have Vandy a 26.5-point favorite. With top-ranked Texas (6-0) set to visit Vandy Oct. 26, Rodgers says he doesn’t think Vandy will suffer a letdown against the 2-4 Mid-American Conference foe.

Rodgers calls the earlier loss at Georgia State “a great learning experience that will really propel them through games like Ball State with Texas on the horizon. Once you have a game like Alabama under your belt, anybody that didn’t believe or anybody that had any shred of doubt in that locker room doesn’t have it anymore.

“So having a game like Alabama under your belt only breeds and builds that confidence that they’ll walk into that game against Texas regardless of what their rank is or if they’re No. 1 again.”

Could the Commodores knock off a second top-ranked team?

If you asked Pavia directly, he might just say “Don’t bet against it.”

“(Beating Alabama) just put my name out there more, but I’ve been doing this since I was a little kid, really,” says Pavia, who aspires to play in the NFL next season. “There’s something bigger out there for us that we want. We have the goal in mind that the only people that could stop us is Vanderbilt football.”