Auburn, AL--It was always the goal, but for most of the last decade it's felt like more of a far off dream.

Instead of waking up and looking around at the harsh reality of how far off that dream really is like it did a year ago, Clark Lea's team is living it. It's celebrating.

For the first time since 2018, Vanderbilt is going bowling.

Perhaps more impressive than that achievement in itself is that Vanderbilt did it with three games to go. It's not ready to stop there, either. It wants more.

That's why Lea's group is where it is. It's vastly improved on the line of scrimmage, it has a quarterback that is among Vanderbilt's best in recent memory and it's well coached.

It wouldn't be at a mark like this so early with just that, though.

What's separated this group from Lea's previous ones is that when it mentions a goal like bowl eligibility and beating Alabama its players don't just say that.

They believe it.

When previous Vanderbilt teams broached the subject of bowl eligibility it treated it as some existential being that would change everything upon its arrival.

For this group it was just business as usual, though. An outcome like that was assumed.

Lea's team knew the history and it knew about the drought. They didn't let that define them, though.

Instead they'll be defined a group that made history in a program that doesn't have many positives in that department. They'll be remembered as the group that made a largely detached school embrace football.

They'll be known as the group that made Vanderbilt football fun.

It's also a group that provides hope that the modern college football landscape is beneficial to Vanderbilt and that it can exist in it. Vanderbilt has become a threat to not just exist as a bowl-eligible program once and awhile, but to be one that has a chance to be a winner more often than not.

That can only happen if this is capitalized on, though.

Vanderbilt picking up its sixth win shouldn't be the mountaintop for Lea's group. In fact, it already isn't.

Lea's team has been ranked inside the AP Top 25, it's won against No. 1 Alabama, it's picked up two SEC road wins in three tries. A bowl-eligible title is validation for Lea's vision, but is far from the first testament to it.

Now as Lea aims to do this every season, he has to continue to sell his vision that this is repeatable without Diego Pavia at the helm and that this is a program with a chance to be more than a one-hit wonder.

For now that's not important, though. That can be worried about later.

Vanderbilt doesn't have to look ahead. It's playing meaningful football in November.

It's going to play beyond it, too.