Clark Lea is talented, respected and top-notch defensive coordinator and considered a rising star. He is also a Vanderbilt alum and Nashville native. Vanderbilt has a head coaching vacancy after it fired Derek Mason on Sunday, a move that made Notre Dame fans antsy about losing an essential staff member.
It’s not too hard to connect the dots here and see the fit given Lea’s background and coaching chops. The body of work is undeniable. He has overseen sturdy defenses in each of his three years as the Irish defensive coordinator. This year, with six new starters and a run defense that went from good to great despite some key losses — not to mention no spring practice — just might be his most impressive one.
What’s left to play out is to see how much Vanderbilt wants Lea and how much Lea wants Vanderbilt. BlueandGold.com’s Patrick Engel and Lou Somogyi explore the idea of Lea going to Vanderbilt and what coaching the Commodores would mean in this week’s edition of chain mail.
Patrick Engel: Let’s start with the notable headline out of Vanderbilt athletics director Candice Storey Lee’s recent press conference. She is seeking an “offensive-minded” head coach to replace Mason, a former defensive coordinator.
You might read that and think Notre Dame’s in the clear. I’d caution against doing so. That’s merely a guideline, not a prerequisite written in Sharpie. At least in a competent coaching search.
Hiring coaches is a crapshoot, and some of these supposed “home-run hires” in recent years have produced underwhelming results (in some cases just whelming, if you will). I look at that and begin to wonder if hiring someone because of a scheme or because they oversaw good offenses at a prior job is emphasizing the wrong things. If these searches have taught anything, it’s that nothing is guaranteed to work.
Anyway, the point in my tangent there is to say Lee’s job is to hire the best candidate. Maybe they have an offensive background, and if so, even better for Lee’s list of criteria. But I look at Lea, his track record and his fit and can’t see how he’s not on the very short list for best candidate even if he’s a defensive coach.
Lou Somogyi: Many years ago, ESPN’s Lee Corso in talking about coaching changes said, and I paraphrase, “if the guy who is being replaced was defensive-minded, book it, the next one will be emphasizing offense. If he was short, the next guy will be tall. If he was old, the new guy will be young.”
Go through Notre Dame’s own history of head coaches from Frank Leahy on, and you will find this to be so true. Mason was the defensive coordinator for Stanford’s superb four-year run from 2010-13— and Lea would fit that exact same profile. Elsewhere, alumni who have done very well as head coaches at high academic schools include David Shaw at Stanford and Pat Fitzgerald at Northwestern. Does Lea envision he could be the same at Vanderbilt?
Lea was a finalist for the Boston College head coaching position last year before the Eagles hired Ohio State’s Jeff Hafley, so it’s out there that he has interest to take the next step as a head coach. Brian Kelly himself stated earlier this year he is mentoring Lea on the ins and outs of being a head coach. It comes down to whether Lea believes this would be the right move at this stage of his career.
Patrick Engel: And to me, that question is not a simple hand-wave and dismissal of the Vanderbilt job as if it’s akin to coaching at South Central Louisiana State University.
But it does have challenges. It’s the hardest job in the SEC. They’ve rarely been competitive in the SEC for an extended stretch of seasons. It’s in the same division as Florida and Georgia. Vanderbilt will usually get Alabama or LSU on the schedule each year. Pretty much every conference game is against a team that has more talent.
If you assume Lea wants to coach at a championship level, Vanderbilt’s probably not the place for that or the place to elevate someone to a job that is a title contender. The Commodores have had 10 coaches since 1975. Only two left for bigger jobs, Gerry DiNardo for LSU in 1994 and James Franklin for Penn State in 2014.
But let’s say Lea has visions of turning Vanderbilt into something like Northwestern. The program’s history laughs at such visions. Fitzgerald, though, cackles at the idea that it’s impossible to burst through a perceived ceiling at a tough job.
Lou Somogyi: Indeed, Vanderbilt can be a coaching graveyard. You mention DiNardo, who was a starting guard for Notre Dame’s 1973 national champs under Ara Parseghian and an All-American in 1974. While coaching at Vanderbilt from 1991-94, his records were 5-6, 4-7, 5-6 and 5-6 — and he was 9-22 overall in SEC contests.
Yet that body of work was so impressive that LSU hired him. The feeling was, “Wow, if you can consistently win five games a season at Vanderbilt, you must be doing extraordinary work!” How many other Power Five schools would have given Mason seven seasons while averaging four wins a year? But that’s Vanderbilt. You are renowned academically, but just a fish out of water in the SEC.
That is what Lea would have to think long and hard about with his future. He has a wonderful situation at Notre Dame where he can make seven figures at one of the top half-dozen programs at the country, maybe even put himself in line as Kelly’s successor, or be more selective about where he wants to go, like Kirby Smart was as Nick Saban’s defensive coordinator for many years at Alabama.
Former Irish defensive coordinator Bob Diaco also was itching to be a head coach after a successful four-year run here from 2010-13, but that Connecticut job quickly buried him (he is now back on his feet as the defensive coordinator at Purdue).
Patrick Engel: You alluded to what can make that job attractive: a long leash, lack of pressure and a lot of relativity being applied to the win-loss record.
Take a look at Franklin’s tenure. He went 24-15 in three years, with three of those wins against Football Championship Subdivision teams. None of the 21 Football Bowl Subdivision wins came against teams that finished with fewer than five losses. Only one of the vanquished opponents, Georgia in 2013, was ranked at the time of the game. And that was enough to land him a coveted job at Penn State.
Mason never once finished .500 or better in the SEC and lasted seven years. If you merely beat all the mediocre and bottom-feeder teams in the SEC in a given year at Vanderbilt, you’re a commodity. It’s not like Lea would need to walk in and produce a 10-win season within three years to be lauded for his work.
On top of that, the job pays. Mason was making more than $3 million per year. It has location and facilities upgrades on the way. I can understand how Lea could look at all that as reasons to make it work that outweigh the challenges, especially when combining everything with his connections there.
Lou Somogyi: Above all, any coach worth his salt will believe he can be the guy who can turn it around. Like Lea, Barry Alvarez had never been a defensive coordinator until he was given that title at Notre Dame by Lou Holtz in 1988 after a far bigger name in Foge Fazio left. Alvarez turned out to be a fantastic defensive coordinator, just like Lea has, helping the Irish to the 1988 national title and a school-record 23-game winning streak.
Alvarez left in 1990 to take the Wisconsin head coaching position. The Badgers at the time were in the throes of six straight losing seasons, coming off 1-10 in 1988 and 2-9 in 1989, and had not finished in the final rankings in 28 years. Alvarez went on to lead Wisconsin to three Rose Bowl wins and become a state legend. He is still serving as the AD at a program that has become a top-20 fixture, and quite often top-10, too.
While such a rise would be less realistic at Vanderbilt, I could see where a competitor like Lea would be intrigued by the challenge presented. If it is an itch he feels needs to be scratched, then go for it.
• Learn more about our print and digital publication, Blue & Gold Illustrated.
• Watch our videos and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
• Sign up for Blue & Gold's news alerts and daily newsletter.
• Subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts.
• Follow us on Twitter: @BGINews, @BGI_LouSomogyi, @Rivals_Singer, @PatrickEngel_, @MasonPlummer_ and @AndrewMentock.
• Like us on Facebook.
