October 07, 2024 | Read Online

Here's EXACTLY how crazy that Vanderbilt upset of Alabama was:

To the newspaper archives!

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

A quick housekeeping note from the jump here:

I am flying out to Utah tomorrow night to spend a few days in Salt Lake and Provo before the Arizona/BYU game this weekend. If you’re in the 801 and would like to say hello, or have a story idea I should investigate while I’m in the area, drop me a line! I’m working on a few leads, but have access to a car and a flexible schedule. I should be back in Chicago on Sunday, October 13.

I had a bunch of other stuff I wanted to write about today, but when Vanderbilt knocks off Alabama, and then a bunch of other crazy upsets happen too, well, you have to readjust the publishing schedule for a second.

It’s hard to overstate how uncommon days like last Saturday are in college football.

Via our friends at The Athletic, “AP No. 1 teams had gone 134-1 against unranked opponents” since Oregon State knocked off USC back in 2008. Most of those 135 games weren’t anywhere near close, either.

But at least Oregon State had some recent success. The year before they sprung the upset on USC, the Beavers won nine games and finished in the AP Top 25. They won ten games the year before that. It was surprising to see that particular Oregon State team win that specific game, but Oregon State winning a huge game wouldn’t have been earth-shattering surprising to a college football fan in the late 2000s.

But Vanderbilt? The Commodores were 0-60 all=time against AP Top 5 opponents. It’s been more than a decade since Vandy finished above .500. And they were facing off against not just any #1 team, but Alabama, the opponent that dominated them in a way few power conference opponents have dominated anybody over the last few decades.

Here’s a little historic context behind just how hilariously one-sided this series has gone:

Before last night, the last time Vanderbilt beat Alabama was in 1984, a 30-21 Commodore victory in Tuscaloosa. That Alabama team went 5-6. I, a 37-year-old man, was not born yet.
The last time Vanderbilt beat Alabama in Nashville was way back in 1969, when Vandy squeaked by, 14-10. That Alabama team went 6-5, losing to Colorado in the Liberty Bowl.
The last time Vanderbilt scored more than 30 points in a win over Alabama? All the way back to 1956, when they beat the Tide 32-7 in Mobile. That Alabama squad went 2-7.
The last time Vanderbilt beat an Alabama team that was actually any good? By my count, we’d have to go all the way back to 1950. That Alabama team went 9-2, finished in the top 20 in the polls, and gave up more than 20 points just once all season. That one time was in a 27-22 loss to Vanderbilt.
The last time Vandy dropped 40 or more points on Alabama in a win? That, my friends, requires us to go all the back to the Paleolithic era of college football. The 1906 Vanderbilt Commodores, perhaps the first truly great major college football program in Southern history, demolished Alabama, 78-0. That game remains the most lopsided loss in Crimson Tide history.

Here’s a headline from that game, btw:

that is NOT the typical Same Old Story about Vandy

To put that in perspective, the last time Vandy dropped 40 points on Alabama, Grover Cleveland, Butch Cassidy, Leopold II and Mark Twain were all still alive.

Also, newspapers were running ads like this back then.

Taken from the Nashville Banner, Mon, Oct, 22Taken

Is this the start of a trend? Eh, probably not. But it still matters!

I understand the argument that the combination of NIL and the transfer portal makes it more difficult for mega-elite programs to maintain depth, but I’m not sure if the math actually confirms that yet. I could see a world where there are more upsets in the College Football Playoff than we might expect, but Texas losing to, say, Penn State in December, is not the same thing as Texas losing to Kentucky next month.

I also understand the argument that while this result is deeply funny, it doesn’t actually matter, since Alabama is still highly likely to make the Playoff.

I think that line of thinking is ridiculous.

For one, all of Saturday’s results should significantly impact postseason scenarios. Sure, Alabama currently has the best “win” of this college football season (Georgia, last week, in case you’ve forgotten), but the Tide also still have to play Tennessee, Missouri, LSU and Oklahoma this season. Tennessee, fresh off an almost-as-shocking upset loss to unranked Arkansas, also has Georgia on the schedule. The Bulldogs face the Volunteers and Texas.

Is there room for Texas, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee in the playoff now? Before last week, I think the answer was probably yes. Now? I’m not sure anybody could be so certain, especially with Texas A&M and Ole Miss (and their favorable schedules) looming. Those upset losses could be very consequential.

But let’s say Alabama goes to the Playoff and Vandy maybe goes to the Music City Bowl. So what?

If the only prism you use to examine college football is “how will this game impact who ultimately wins the national title”, you are missing out on almost everything. This upset, for a program has gone decades without an equivalent win, will change the lives of the players who participated in it. It will undoubtedly be used by the university as a fundraising and development catalyst that will extend beyond the athletic department’s reach. It will be a story that the athletes, and everybody in those stands, will remember for their rest of their lives.

That’s the entire point. This wasn’t some sterile NFC South matchup that will be forgotten in three weeks. This was the Generals beating the Globetrotters, David kicking Goliath’s ass, Truman beating Dewey, whatever.

Those upsets don’t happen every week. They’re worth savoring and remembering.

Unless they involve my favorite teams, in which case they are tragedies that should be ignored as soon as possible.

A few other important updates from Extra Points HQ:

We have a small update for Athletic Director Simulator 4000 that went live over the weekend. I’ve added new scenarios about negotiations over unmet NIL obligations, conference realignment, fundraising, and more, while also rebalancing and tweaking some existing questions, so the game will feel more fresh and current. ADS4000 is available for all premium Extra Points subscribers. To set expectations here, I don’t expect to have enough time (or money) to do any major updates to ADS4000 this year, but we will be able to regularly add and rebalance new questions multiple more times this season.

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We also have spent a lot of time over the last week listening to your feedback for the Extra Points Library. A few of the quality of life suggestions you’ve made have already been updated to the system, and we’ve also added a lot of new documents…mostly FRS reports (itemized budgets), but also new coach contracts, new vendor contracts, and more. Over the next few days, we’ll also be adding dozens and dozens of game contracts, with other updates on the way.

Basically, if you study college athletics or work in college athletics leadership, you’re going to want access to the Library.