When you think of how great the 2008 Vanderbilt football season was, you have to compare it to the 2007 season, which ended in excruciating fashion.
The backbreaker wasn't the concluding rout by Wake Forest; it was the 25-24 defeat at Tennessee when the Commodores blew a 15-point fourth-quarter lead. Bryant Hahnfeldt missed a 49-yard field goal just to the left at the end and everyone in Commodore Nation groaned.
Vanderbilt coach Bobby Johnson looked up as the kick missed and the collapse was complete. He calmly took off his headset and prepared to walk to the middle of the field and shake Phil Fulmer's hand, while the players and coaches around him looked utterly despondent.
And Johnson went right back to work for next week. Disappointed, sure. But despairing? Never.
Bobby Johnson always gets up after he gets knocked down, and that's why he was an easy choice for our Vanderbilt Coach of the Year for 2008-2009. Thirteen months after that debacle in Knoxville, Johnson and Hahnfeldt were heroes after winning Vanderbilt's first bowl game since 1955, with Hahnfeldt drilling a 45-yarder to win the game with three minutes left.
Johnson never stopped believing in himself and his coaching staff, and more importantly, he never stopped believing in his players. The end result was Vanderbilt's best football season in a generation.
It was supposed to be a rebuilding year. It turned out to be a monumental one instead.
Johnson is all about hard work, discipline and development. Vanderbilt doesn't get five-star recruits, but he and his staff turn their players into four or five-star talent. You have to if you want to compete, let alone win, in the Southeastern Conference.
Johnson has the respect of his players and staff because he respects them and puts them first. And in doing so, he has turned around a program beset by failure for years. Nothing could make him happier than seeing his hard-working players rewarded by their success.
"This is what coaches live for," he said after the Commodores beat then-No. 13 Auburn on Oct. 4. "I live to walk into the locker room and see how happy our players are."
A team of defensive playmakers developed by Johnson's staff bullied South Carolina, Ole Miss, Auburn and Kentucky into 12 turnovers. In the national spotlight almost all season, Vanderbilt delivered; all three games shown on ESPN, the Commodores took down ranked opponents.
Every interview he did on ESPN after big wins, Johnson said he was happy most of all for his players and coaches. After winning the Music City Bowl, the man who had endured six seasons of consistent defeat didn't take a well-deserved moment to say it was a moment of personal vindication, because that's not how he operates.
At the same time, he's never satisfied either. To Johnson, success should beget more success; a 7-6 record shouldn't be the top of the mountain.
And with him at the helm of the Commodores, it won't be.
Honorable Mentions:
Melanie Balcomb, women's basketball
Won third SEC Tournament since 2004, has made NCAA Tournament all seven years in Nashville, also made Sweet 16 for second straight season
John Williamson, bowling
Coached bowlers to five tournament victories and a No. 1 ranking nearly the entire season, reached nationals for fourth straight season, just signed five players to 2009 recruiting class
Tim Corbin, baseball
Has young team rolling, made unorthodox line-up moves to shake things up and has the Commodores back on the winning track
