Clark Lea on joy, burden and pain of leadership and rising Vanderbilt football expectations
When Clark Lea first took the job coaching Vanderbilt football, like many people, his mind immediately went to the finish line.
It's human nature, Lea said, to jump ahead when starting something new. He had a vision for what the Commodores could be when he took the job, and he made it clear from the start that he was aiming high.
It's easy to dream of what could be. Actually building toward that is a lot harder. Lea is reminded of that every day when he looks out the window of his office to see both end zones of FirstBank Stadium torn up. Lea believes the construction is symbolic of what his program wants to do − but also that, no matter how much you can wish to speed up the process, some things just take time.
"I've learned a lot about the joys of leadership, but also the burden and the pain," Lea told The Tennessean. "I've learned that good things take time. I've learned that not everyone's going to share your vision or understand your vision all the time. That's not what's important. What's important is rallying the people that do understand and to keep inspiring them every day into the action that's required to take ground and those are things that I would have never known without this experience."
Heading into Vanderbilt's season opener against Hawaii on Saturday (6:30 p.m. CT, SEC Network), Lea knows the expectation will be set higher. He's made clear throughout the preseason that he believes this team can make it to a bowl game, something the Commodores haven't done since 2018. But Lea knows well that goal-setting is the easiest part. Actually doing it will be harder.
Vanderbilt football roster built old-school
In an era in which many teams flip their roster every offseason, Lea is sticking to what is now an old-school approach: building his team on relationships that begin while players are still in high school.
Vanderbilt takes pride in the fact that it had the fewest players transfer out of any team in the SEC. As a result, the Commodores took just two scholarship transfers this offseason, a fact they highlighted in recruiting materials.
Players like Will Sheppard, CJ Taylor and AJ Swann stuck around despite the fact that they are good enough to have received interest from other Power Five programs. Veterans like Nate Clifton and Jaylen Mahoney returned expressly because they had been around for the rebuild and wanted to see it through by helping the team reach a bowl. Lea actively seeks out recruits who understand and embrace the current state of the program.
After all, the players that were here for the 26-game SEC losing streak, the winless season in 2020 and the original announcement of the facilities project understand more than anyone else the significance of the rebuild. That group has been through a lot, but, as Lea put it, "They're taught to see the long-term benefit of the short-term pain and suffering. And yet, they learned that pain and suffering together is fun."
It's an unusual strategy, with other SEC teams taking their pick of available players in the portal, but Lea still believes building his roster on relationships and development could end up more sustainable in the long run.
"It's nice sometimes to think about the quick fix, but anyone who's followed this program should recognize that there is no quick fix to this," Lea said. "Our foundation has to go deep and has to be tethered to our identity as a university. And we'll never deviate from that. I think every year that we show signs of improvement, success. As the facilities are built and we're living in them, we'll have opportunities to go deeper in our recruiting pool, which is exciting, but it's still going to be about honing in on the type of player and the type of person that has the ability to change the trajectory of this program."
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Clark Lea on the bowl goal
Lea has been very public that the team's goal is to reach a bowl game in 2023, but he stops short of calling it an expectation. Despite his public bravado, and despite the fact that Vanderbilt's 2023 schedule is the most manageable it will be before Texas and Oklahoma join the league in 2024, Lea stopped short of saying it was an expectation.
"I think we have hopes for the season," Lea said. "And and we understand that those hopes are going to fuel the process and the work that we put in. That's what we control. But we're also not guaranteed anything just because we feel like we've moved forward, and so that's been an important part of the messaging."
To get it done, Lea will need to win on the margins and continue development of the younger players on the roster. Given where the program was when Lea took over, it was easy to sell recruits on a vision. But now, the bulldozers are in the ground − both literally and figuratively − and 2023 stands as Lea's chance to show that his vision is more than just talk.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Vanderbilt football: Clark Lea on joy, burden and pain of leadership
