Vibes Take a Tumble in Nashville After Quarterback Lawsuit and Commodores Loss
The Vanderbilt Commodores entered last week riding high on the back of a 6-3 record and coming off of a 17-7 win on the road over the Auburn Tigers.
Then, on Friday, news broke that senior transfer quarterback Diego Pavia would be suing the NCAA over JUCO counting toward a player's eligibility, meaning that his collegiate eligibility is up after this season.
On Saturday, the South Carolina Gamecocks rolled into town, sporting a 5-3 record overall and looking to improve, and they did just that, taking down the Commodores 28-7 and ending the Cinderella story before it even got rolling.
The vibes were high in Nashville leading up to the week, and no one thought they would be coming back down after the win over the Alabama Crimson Tide earlier in the year.
But oh how wrong we were, as the vibes have taken a massive hit, and Seth Emerson of The Athletic has dropped Vandy all the way to sixth in this week's Southeastern Conference vibes power rankings after ranking first in last week's iteration.
"Diego Pavia sued the NCAA on a Friday, and a day later Vanderbilt had its worst offensive output of the season," writes Emerson, "this is the first time in a while someone suing the NCAA has suffered a loss."
There are frivolous lawsuits, and then there are frivolous lawsuits, and this one ranks fairly high on the frivolity meter.
Pavia was a mostly unknown quarterback before transferring to Vanderbilt before the season, and that remained the same until he led the team to victory over the Crimson Tide.
Since that time, the NIL deals have poured in for the quarterback, but he is not someone who will be seeing the field on Sundays, and he is well aware of that, thus the lawsuit against the NCAA.
The rules covering eligibility have been around much longer than Pavia has been, and he is only worried about missing out on a longer runway for his NIL deals, but the joke is really on him, because with this distraction now surrounding the team, and a schedule that is only getting harder down the stretch, those NIL deals are about to dry up quick, fast, and in a hurry.
It was a good run for the quarterback, and the vibes in Nashville, but like all good things, they must come to an end.
Unfortunately for Pavia and the Commodores, that end is coming more as a whimper than a powerful bang.
