Vanderbilt football coach Clark Lea has already seen his name in the sea of coaching candidate hot boards.
Success will bring interest. Lea gets that.
He’s quickly landed on a Penn State coaching hot board after former Vandy coach James Franklin was fired.
And there likely will be plenty more to come.
Lea also gets that those boards and the potential rumors that come with them can have an effect on his family. That’s why he sat down with his 13-year-old son, Clark III, and warned him of the potential consequences.
“It doesn’t faze me,” Lea told The Tennessean on Oct. 23, two days before the No. 12 Commodores (6-1, 2-1 SEC) face No. 14 Missouri (6-1, 2-1) at 2:30 p.m. CT in a “College GameDay” game in Nashville on ESPN. “But we live in a day and age when rumors can pop up from any corner of the internet.
“I had a conversation with my son about it, just because I don’t want him having a rumor brought to him at school that somehow jars him up, right?”
What Clark Lea said about coaching at Vanderbilt
“My goal has always been to build a championship-level program at Vanderbilt,” Lea said. “There’s very specific things we have done to this point that have aligned us with that goal, and there are very specific things that we will need to do to stay aligned with that goal.
“That’s where my focus is right now. That includes playing the best possible game against Missouri. It’s easy for me right now to stay in the moment.”
What Vanderbilt AD director Candice Lee said about Clark Lea’s future
Athletics director Candice Lee has strong feelings about Lea being Vanderbilt’s football coach.
“My goal is for Clark Lea to be my first and last football coach that I hire,” she said. “It is my desire and goal for him to be our coach for a long, long time. I will say that. It’s really a blessing to have leadership other people want, because it means you’re doing something right.
Paul Skrbina is a sports enterprise reporter covering the Predators, Titans, Nashville SC, local colleges and local sports for The Tennessean. Reach him at pskrbina@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @paulskrbina.
