Brian Kelly offers his view of what led to Clark Lea's success at Vanderbilt

It’s not every day you get to mid-October and a ranked Vanderbilt team is set to host a ranked LSU squad, with both teams entertaining College Football Playoff hopes. Yet much about Commodores’ coach Clark Lea and his tenure has been a bit unusual.

First, it’s not often a coach survives a pair of two-win seasons in his first three years in charge. Yet Lea has not only survived them, he’s now thriving in the middle of his fifth season in charge of the program.

In fact, Vanderbilt has a chance to match its win total from those first three years this season alone — if it can keep taking care of business. How has Clark Lea been so successful? Well, let LSU boss Brian Kelly explain.

“It’s a great question. So when you take over a program, right, and they took their lumps early on, it’s easy to listen to the noise and go away from what your vision is for your program,” Kelly said. “Clark has never swayed from what the vision is that he had and the vision that he painted for everybody else there.”

That vision has been building up the roster from the ground up. Vanderbilt has done that a number of ways.

Clark Lea has been aggressive in the transfer portal, where he snagged quarterback Diego Pavia, who has helped lead the charge over the last two years. He’s also recruited the right type of guys for his program.

What’s impressive to Kelly is that he was able to do that despite going 2-10 twice in his first three years. Usually that’s a death knell to coaches, even at Vanderbilt.

“That’s hard to do, because you’ve got so many people saying, ‘You should be doing this,’ and, ‘Why aren’t you doing that?’ and, ‘You can’t win here,'” Kelly said. “He’s done an incredible job of avoiding the noise and staying steadfast in his beliefs as to what the vision is for his program.”

Vanderbilt still has a long way to go to get where Clark Lea ultimately wants to. But the vision is beginning to take shape.

The Commodores are in the middle of a stretch where they’ll face four straight ranked teams. A loss to Alabama started the stretch… can the team flip it around this weekend against the Tigers?

Kelly will be hoping to avoid that. But one thing he does know, win or lose, is that Clark Lea has done one heck of a job.

“It’s a great lesson for other coaches,” Kelly said. “At the end of the day, you have to be consistent at something. His messaging, the way he wanted to build his program was consistent, and he’s, it’s showing itself now.”