Nashville, TENN--Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea spent nights dreaming of this.

Some of those nights he felt far away from it, at times he probably doubted that it would ever happen. Through those nights Lea continued to refine his blueprint, he continued to walk step by step towards the mountaintop that often couldn't be seen through the fog of Vanderbilt's 2-10 season.

Lea found the light at the end of the tunnel on Saturday as Vanderbilt knocked off No. 1 Alabama.

Perhaps the most impressive part of all of it was that it wasn’t a fluke. Lea had the blueprint to pick up a win like that and his team followed it nearly perfectly.

Lea did it his way and it worked.

Seeing that come to fruition was emotional for Vanderbilt's fourth-year head coach.

"I think the emotions are a testament to the level of care, the level of investment from so many people that are cheering for us," Lea said of Vanderbilt's win over Alabama through tears. "That is the dream, that's why I came. That's what I came here to do."

Saturday was a chance for Lea to get some fruit as a result of his labor of love. The fourth-year head coach loves this place, he loves the people inside of it, the people who have departed from it.

He loves trying to rewrite the script of what it's about.

On Saturday he did that.

“I love our university. I love our city. I love our program," Lea said. "This is why I came back. This is meant to be emotional because I’ve bled a lot into this.”

Lea feels as if the figurative bleeding that he endured made this possible.

If the heartbreak of 2023 wasn't so great, perhaps the jubilance of 2024 wouldn't have happened.

“The obstacle became the way, it became the path forward," Lea said. "We had to really dig in and say what does this need to look like…We said we’re here to win, so we’re gonna measure everything, every action, every dollar spent against what it takes to win.”

Rather than backing off, Lea's remaining staff following his abundance of coaching changes "held on to the rope" and pulled.

Lea and his staff came to the conclusion that it would have to pull that rope in a different direction. There was no other choice.

From there is a story that has been told repeatedly, but perhaps not enough. Lea re-evaluated every habit his program had formed. He looked for an identity. He looked for a fix.

That resulted in a push for increased investment in the program, evolution and the hiring of Jerry Kill as well as Tim Beck.

"It was this feeling of ‘evolve or die’, ‘adapt or die’," Lea said of the time shortly after last season. "It’s not good enough to just copy and paste.”

Vanderbilt avoided the trap of retention and continuity that it fell into last season and changed its blueprint for how this thing was to be ran. It needed more talent and it needed something to hang its hat on.

Lea found something in Beck and Kill's scheme while refining his approach defensively as he took over the defensive coordinator role.

Those approaches showed up on Saturday.

“What I think the breakthrough was in terms of the performance was we played a clean game and we played to our strategy," Lea said of Saturday's game. "I have talked about this, this is all I’ve said. Game control offense, point limitation defense, special teams win field position, let’s play penalty free and let’s win the turnover battle and that’s what we did. I think it validates that thought internally."

On Saturday Vanderbilt got validation that it was all worth it. All the hoops it jumped through. All the money. All the time.

It was worth it.