There Clark Lea was, in his white quarter zip standing on the Vanderbilt sideline with a smile across his face. Lea would go on to say everything Vanderbilt didn’t do Saturday when he joined the media a few minutes later, but in this moment he was focused only on what it did do Saturday.

And that was enough for Vanderbilt to leave Starkville with a 25-23 win over Mississippi State.

Lea won’t say it, but he had to be wondering if a moment like this would happen in a season that he admits has fallen short of all his expectations. Outside of injury, seemingly everything that Lea worried would go wrong has gone wrong for this Vanderbilt team. Human nature is to assume that more would go wrong Saturday as Vanderbilt went to Starkville as an underdog. It didn’t, though, finally.

In this miserable Vanderbilt football season, it finally experienced a moment of joy. Vanderbilt quarterback Jared Curtis shook hands and smiled.…