When Clark Lea became the head football coach at Vanderbilt University, he knew there were challenges – one of which was the mental state of the team.
But that is one of several areas that is changing at a program, which last won a Southeastern Conference game in October 2019.
One year, and one season later after becoming the 29th head football coach in school history, Lea is ever the optimist, and it showed when he served as guest speaker at the Old Hickory Rotary Club of Jackson’s weekly meeting at the DoubleTree by Hilton, Monday.
Lea said before he took the job at his alma mater, he had to gauge the support of the program, and he found what he was looking for in the form of the school’s chancellor.
“If I don’t have the support of Daniel Diermeier, I don’t have a chance,” Lea said, “I wouldn’t have the job – actually, to go even a step further. As much as I love Vanderbilt, I wanted to make sure we were going to have the support needed to build a program I had in my mind.”
Lea said the support had to go beyond anything that had done in the past.
“Daniel Diermeier was in my office Friday, talking about football recruiting, and how do we go about identifying (players),” Lea said, “He spent an hour-and-a-half with us – just interested in what we do in football, and that level of investment just doesn’t happen in academics.”
Lea, who previously served as the defensive coordinator at the University of Notre Dame from 2018 to 2020, began his coaching career at UCLA as a graduated assistant in 2006.
“At Vanderbilt, if you choose to invest on our campus, what you invest as a student will multiply over your lifetime – that I can promise, but it requires showing up and engaging,” Lea said, “We won’t shift our approach … overtime, if we stay committed to the things that make us unique we’ll have a product that will allow us to differentiate our market that will ultimately speak to certain people looking for this experience that will allow us to put a competitive product on the field.”
(PHOTO: Sea Bass, sports director, Grace Media Group, speaks with Clark Lea, Vanderbilt University’s head football coach)
