Since we’re talking so much about social media:
On Dec. 11, two days before the Heisman Trophy ceremony that Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia attended but didn’t win, Special Olympics Tennessee posted on its X account a video of an “incredible holiday shopping experience” for its athletes.
That experience? Hosted by Pavia. He’s prominent in the video.
Now, that post went largely unnoticed. It had relatively minuscule engagement numbers. I bring that up to show how much our society prefers to fixate on the bad in others instead of the good — something social media’s algorithms both exploit and ensure.
Noticing Pavia’s better angels has never been easy. There is good, though. I believe that. I’ve heard way too many people at Vanderbilt — names you’d know, ones I deeply respect — insist it.
Those are the people I’m sad for on the day after that Heisman ceremony. It was spectacular for Vanderbilt, wasn’t it? A special moment in the spotlight for the school’s dignitaries, at least until they checked social media in the hours after the event.
I’m not going to try to defend Pavia’s sore loser social media post saying to (expletive) Heisman voters after they (resoundingly) chose Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza over him.
Because I can’t defend it.
It was mindless. It was classless. It was cringeworthy.
Worst of all, it was just sad.
It’s truly unfortunate that a spectacular celebration of Vanderbilt football and Pavia now will be widely associated with an unnecessary post that accomplished nothing other than validate reasons people already had to dislike him.
I’m unsure who Pavia was trying to impress, but those people should have advised him otherwise. It was as if he was trying too hard to live up to his hardscrabble, renegade style while also staying true to the podcasting bro culture of the mid-2020s.
I get that. I get going out and blowing off some steam in New York with your pals. Years ago, if you’re ticked about losing enough to say, “Man, F those voters,” and only your friends hear it, then no big deal. But in a world where everyone wants everything posted for anyone to see? Big difference. Big dangers when done so foolishly.
Pavia deserves credit for owning up to his mistake and apologizing in a social media post, writing: “I didn’t handle those emotions well at all and did not represent myself the way I wanted to.”
Perhaps that’ll diffuse the startling amount of outrage this has provoked. I hope so.
But more for Vanderbilt than for Pavia. Because it wasn’t just himself he didn’t represent well. This ordeal reflected terribly on his university and its coaches and teammates and its fan base. These are the people who have — and will — stick up for Pavia the most because they know him the best.
Think back to high school or college. Did you have that one friend — and that friend no doubt was a lot of fun — who you could never be quite sure what he was capable of doing just to get a laugh or amuse people or endear himself, or hey, maybe for no reason at all?
Others might hate the guy, but you’d be like, “Nah, that’s just so-and-so. You don’t know him like we do.”
That’s how Vanderbilt feels about Pavia. Yet even its die-hard fans would have a hard time stomaching this latest instance of how handling fame does not come naturally for everyone.
While Pavia has proven to be an amazing overachiever on the football field, it’s fair to point out that this is someone who became very famous in a very short time after being a nobody for a very long time. That’s not an easy skill for a strong personality to master on his own.
He didn’t have an agent, a trainer, a QB coach and a publicist before he graduated high school. He was never trained on how to be a Heisman finalist. He made himself one through determination and toughness.
But that does not mean Pavia was owed this award.
Nor does it excuse acting so immaturely after failing to win it.
A brief aside: After the “Bad Boy Vols” of the 2022 Tennessee baseball season, former coach Tony Vitello told me the part that bothered him the most was when Vols slugger Jordan Beck infamously raised a middle finger as he rounded the bases during an NCAA Regional game.
“Because what it did was it gave evidence,” Vitello said back then. ‘ . . . It kind of checked a box for people that wanted to say, ‘These guys aren’t the villains like in a fun (way).’ ‘
This moment, occurring in the Heisman spotlight, is regrettably indelible for Pavia. It’s going to stick.
Many in my business who don’t know Pavia have sought to criticize him for things like bravado and brash comments or even attire or headphones. But this was indefensible. This was low-hanging fruit, and it was from a Heisman finalist in New York on the night of the ceremony. The aggregation and bashings flowed easy and numerous. That’s on Pavia.
He has labeled himself as a bad guy by looking like one when everyone was watching. A lot of people around Vanderbilt would disagree with that judgment, but that doesn’t matter so much now.
Because disputing it just got a heck of a lot more difficult.
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social