Vanderbilt students responded to their football team’s victory over Alabama in the most natural way: they tore down the goalpost and flung it into the surrounding river. The Commodores stunned the Crimson Tide with a 40-35 victory at FirstBank Stadium in Nashville, Tennessee. Following the victory, the atmosphere in the stadium was tremendous. Quarterback Diego Pavia gave an amazing postgame interview, while the stadium’s jumbotron made a brazen shot at former Alabama coach Nick Saban. It’s not unexpected that the excitement prompted Vanderbilt students to do something outrageous. They quickly targeted the goalpost, tearing it down and carrying it out of the stadium.
While lowering the goalpost was spectacular enough, the students pushed it a step farther by parading it down Broadway. In a memorable spectacle, they marched it all the way to the Cumberland River and dropped it for a symbolic “victory bath.” This was a stark contrast to Vanderbilt’s previous meetings with Alabama, in which the team scored only 13 points in four games under Saban. In their past three games, they were outscored 148-3. However, Alabama did not appear to be invincible on this particular night. Vanderbilt scored 13 points before the midway mark of the first quarter and never looked back.
Carrying a goalpost three miles to a river may appear extreme, but it was an appropriate celebration for the enormity of Vanderbilt’s shock victory over Alabama.
