NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Pat Toomay won a Super Bowl and played at football’s highest level for iconic figures like Tom Landry and John Madden. He published an acclaimed novel and subsequently had a cameo role in Oliver Stone’s film adaptation, a box office hit. He’s lived a truly unique life.
And for all he’s experienced, Oct. 11, 1969, still stands out as a singular achievement.
Toomay’s Commodores upset Alabama 14-10 at Dudley Field, more than 50 years before Diego Pavia and the 2024 Commodores stunned the SEC’s marquee football program. Speaking with Vanderbilt’s Andrew Maraniss shortly after the current Commodores felled the top-ranked Crimson Tide at FirstBank Stadium, Toomay couldn’t come up with gridiron memory any sweeter than his own team’s victory against Bear Bryant—and the ensuing festivities that swept across campus.
“It was huge because it was such an upset, so there it sits,” Toomay said. “As you move on in the game, things get more complicated. That was a very clean night. The whole thing was a high that I would say wasn’t really repeated. You win a Super Bowl and that’s great and all that, but the seasons are long and it’s a relief to get out of a season. … I was 10 years in the league, so there are a lot of complications. Beating Alabama is right up there with everything else.”
Perhaps it’s a case of life imitating art, but Toomay’s remarkable journey—the “everything else”—reads like a novel. At Vanderbilt, he played basketball and football his first year (freshmen weren’t eligible to compete on varsity teams at the time). The hardcourt experience with the freshman team made him a witness to history when he played alongside and came to know and revere Perry Wallace, who would go on to be the first Black student-athlete to play in an SEC varsity basketball game the following season.
Toomay ultimately chose to focus on football and excelled for the Commodores—once the highly touted high school quarterback moved to the other side of the ball. The Dallas Cowboys selected him in the sixth round of the 1970 NFL Draft. He played 10 NFL seasons and was the first Commodore to play in the Super Bowl when the Cowboys reached Super Bowl V. He and Bob Asher became the first Commodores to win a Super Bowl when the Cowboys won Super Bowl VI. In 1977, with the Oakland Raiders, he led the AFC in sacks.
His writing career was born in those early years with the Cowboys and the rich landscape of football-obsessed Texas. With an assist and some introductions from John Siegenthaler, longtime editor of The Tennessean and namesake of Vanderbilt’s Siegenthaler Center, Toomay’s recollections and observations of NFL life took shape as The Crunch, published in 1975 to acclaim—and some consternation in league circles.
“Irreverent is how they described my book,” Toomay told VUCommodores.com. “I suppose it was. I was talking about the things that underline the presentation. I was basically presenting people as human. The people in charge of media and image were not particularly thrilled. They weren’t thrilled with me talking about everybody being human. The marketing aspect is these are superhuman guys and can do anything. I just took down what I was seeing and experiencing.”
In 1984, Toomay published On Any Given Sunday, later adapted into the 1999 movie directed by Oliver Stone that earned more than $100 million at the box office.
