On Tuesday, Dec. 2, Vanderbilt saw its College Football Playoff hopes take a hit when the Commodores were revealed as the No. 14 team in the latest batch of rankings from the playoff selection committee, failing to move up despite being three days removed from a 21-point road beatdown of in-state rival Tennessee.
Faced with an increasingly difficult predicament, Diego Pavia knew just where to turn for help — the leader of the free world.
The star Vanderbilt quarterback, one of a handful of front-runners for the Heisman Trophy, reached out to President Donald Trump on social media shortly after midnight on Wednesday, Dec. 3 to try to get the playoff expanded from 12 to 16 teams.
“MAKE THE EXECUTIVE ORDER PLEASE,” Pavia wrote while tagging Trump in a post on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
The post that Pavia was referencing suggested a 16-team model in which the SEC and Big Ten would receive four guaranteed berths while the ACC and Big 12 would each get two, with the four remaining spots going to at-large teams decided by a computer ranking system.
The Commodores’ 45-24 victory against Tennessee improved them to 10-2, the most wins in a season in program history. They’re part of a crowded playoff picture, though, one that has them on the outside looking in, with little room for advancement.
Of the nine teams directly ahead of Vanderbilt in the playoff rankings, seven of them have completed their regular seasons and won’t be competing in a conference championship game, meaning there’s little, if any, chance that the Commodores could move ahead of them.
Pavia’s belief that Trump might issue an executive order for something as relatively trivial as a college football tournament isn’t necessarily the worst idea. Since taking office in January, Trump has signed 217 executive orders, significantly more than the 77 his predecessor, Joe Biden, did in his first year in office in 2021 and even more than the 55 Trump did in the first year of his first term in 2017.
If his plea goes unanswered, Pavia could always sign up for a Truth Social account and try there.