-
Ryan McGee
It is so hard for anyone to stand out in Nashville because everyone in Nashville is always trying so hard to stand out.
All of those off-the-bus would-be country music stars, performing in so many Broadway bars owned by so many actual stars, entertaining all those bachelorettes in pink cowboy hats and those dudes who look like they are attending a Luke Combs lookalike contest. Music City, USA is always a good time, but it also becomes very repetitive. This town aches for someone to come along and finally snap it out of its endless two-stepping loop. Say, a big-haired blond woman from Sevierville, Tennessee. Or a Man in Black on the train a-comin’ from Folsom. Maybe a girl from a Christmas tree farm in eastern Pennsylvania.
Or a Bama-beating water bug of a quarterback who rolled in off a desert wind that blew in from New Mexico.
«Straight out the dirt, son,» Diego Pavia says, the 24-year-old laughing as he sits up and slaps his hand on a meeting room table in Vanderbilt football’s quarterbacks meeting room. «When I first got here, you would walk down to Broadway and everyone had on Alabama stuff or Georgia stuff or the bars would just have Tennessee flags out front. Now I see a lot of Vandy V’s out there. I think maybe people didn’t see that coming. Just like they didn’t see me coming.»
They see him now. We all do. One year ago, we saw the 6-foot QB (well, that’s how tall the Vanderbilt media guide says he is, but most everyone lists him at 5-10 … but, when a 5-10 sportswriter looks him in the eye, he might be 5-9 … but who cares because he’s also built like a BMW X4) lead the Commodores to the program’s first winning season, first stint in the AP Top 25 and first bowl win since the 2013 campaign. On Oct. 5, 2024, we saw him emulate his childhood hero, Johnny Manziel, by running past No. 1 Alabama, Vandy’s first win over the Tide in 40 years and first win over a top-5 team ever, ending an 0-60 drought.
And in more recent days, the world has seen Pavia at SEC media days and on Netflix, proclaiming that longtime lowly SEC cellar dweller Vandy can be a national title contender. And as the world entered last weekend, it did so dancing along with No. 2 in a music video that dropped for the song «Pavia Mafia,» as artist Axel Varela declared: «From the 505 to the world, baby!» and «Yo me enamoré del juego,» which translates to «I fell in love with the game.»
New Mexico Lobos said they were passing not because they thought he was too small, but because he was too cocky.
«He still isn’t over that one,» Vandy football consultant Jerry Kill says with a laugh. «I don’t think he ever will be over that one. That’s always been part of his gasoline.»
Instead, Pavia settled for New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, where he led his team to the 2021 junior college national title. That night, his heroics for the Broncos were being shown on local New Mexico television. Bellied up to the bar in the Las Cruces Hooters were Kill and longtime mentee Tim Beck, the just-hired head coach and offensive coordinator at New Mexico State. They were watching the game to scout a quarterback — initially, Pavia’s opponent. But when the fire hydrant playing QB for NMMI ran through Iowa Western for a 34-yard touchdown and an early 14-0 lead, Kill looked at Beck and said, «Hell, man, we’ve been watching the wrong guy.»
Nevada. Then his phone rang. It was Kill, whose retirement had lasted all of a few weeks.
«I went to Las Cruces to try and convince Tim Beck to come help us with our offense,» Clark Lea says of the trip he took in late fall 2023, just as he had wrapped up his third season as head coach at Vanderbilt, his alma mater. It was a crushingly disappointing year, the Commodores starting 2-0 but finishing 2-10. «Jerry sat in on some of our conversations and we all connected immediately.»
won an injunction versus the NCAA for one more year of eligibility, instead of being penalized for time served at the junior college level.
«I think that it is easy to see the guy who likes to talk a little and who likes to celebrate a lot and think, ‘Oh, he’s that guy,'» Lea says. «But look at what he has done to be here and stay here, and look at the 50 people who come from New Mexico to be with his family at our games. That’s someone who loves this place.
«Talk to our basketball office or [Vandy baseball head coach] Tim Corbin, and they will tell you that Diego is in their offices, asking about what it takes to win. He has big dreams for himself, but he came here and all of those people come here with him because they love it here.»
Now, everyone else is coming, too, to be with the Pavia Mafia to watch college football at, of all places, Vanderbilt. Yes, he is most definitely prone to hyperbole, but Pavia’s observation about the gentle transfusion of black and gold into the college football identity of the bars along the Cumberland River is no exaggeration. It’s visible. As are the construction cranes that cover FirstBank Stadium, long the SEC’s time capsule of football venues, and the ground being broken to replace the team’s cramped subterranean 1990s football facilities.
All of that renovation was already on the books before Pavia arrived. But the kid who used to flip houses with his mother has injected that sweat equity investment mentality into Nashville’s business community and Vanderbilt’s alumni base.
Nashville is a city that has been constructed atop the idea of having a good time. Residents and visitors alike have never had a problem finding that good time everywhere from Tootsies to the Titans. Now, thanks to the QB that no one saw coming, they are discovering a good time at a place that has been hiding in plain sight since it hosted the state of Tennessee’s first college football game in 1890.
«Building stuff is fun, man,» Pavia says. «It isn’t easy. But nothing worth it is ever easy. So when that work pays off, let’s enjoy it, Vandy. We earned it because we built it.»
Straight out the dirt?
«Straight out the damn dirt.»
