Vanderbilt Football Finds Out Game Time for Mississippi State – Sports Illustrated

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Vanderbilt football is on its bye week, but it still got some scheduling news for the remainder of its 2026 season.
Monday, the SEC announced game times and television designations for conference games during the week of Nov. 7. Heading into the season, it was known that Vanderbilt was going to play Mississippi State either in the midday or night slate. Now, it knows the game time next week.
Vanderbilt and Mississippi State will kickoff at 3:15 p.m. CT on SEC Network when the two meet in a couple of weeks. It will be the first time since 2021 that the Commodores and Bulldogs have met on the football field.
It will be the fourth time Vanderbilt has kicked off in the midday window this season. The other three were the win against Delaware, the loss to Auburn and the loss to Ole Miss.
Vanderbilt is coming off its fifth straight loss over the weekend at the hands of No. 12 Kentucky. Similar to Vanderbilt’s loss to Arkansas on Oct. 17, the Commodores started strong against the Wildcats Saturday, before things started to fall apart midway through the second quarter. By the end of the night, Vanderbilt left Lexington with a 34-17 loss.
Now, Vanderbilt has four games remaining in its 2026 season. With a 3-5 record, it needs to go 3-1 in the month of November to reach bowl eligibility. After the bye week this week, Vanderbilt goes to Mississippi State before returning home for a game against Alabama Nov. 14. After that, it goes to Florida Nov. 21 and closes the regular season at home against in-state rival Tennessee.
Winning three of those four will be a tall mountain to climb given how Vanderbilt has performed since the start of conference play. Vanderbilt is the only team in the SEC to not win a conference game this season.
Vanderbilt is going back to the drawing board this week trying to figure out how to turn its season around. The month of November is the most important month of the season, so the Commodores are going to need to figure things out if they want to end their season on a high note.
As of now, it is a pretty bleak outlook for Vanderbilt this year, but things can always change for the better in college sports. Maybe they do change next week when Vanderbilt goes to Starkville.
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Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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