Clark Lea fighting for his Vanderbilt team and says the 'silliness' of trying to make everybody happy has marred the playoff

Vanderbilt has fought its way to national relevance under Clark Lea, and Lea is now fighting to make sure the Commodores receive their just reward.

That reward: A seat at the College Football Playoff table.

The latest CFP rankings will be released later Tuesday night, and then the final rankings will be unveiled on Sunday at noon ET. Right now, most projections have Vanderbilt on the outside looking in despite its first 10-win season in school history, four wins over ranked teams at the time the games were played, an SEC-leading plus-75 scoring differential, the No. 11 strength of record nationally and its only two losses, both fourth-quarter games on the road, to teams (Alabama and Texas) with a combined 19-5 record.

“This should be about the 12 best teams in the country and a 10-2 team in the SEC … look, obviously we love our league. It just means more here and all that kind of stuff, but there’s a level of respect that needs to be held for the gauntlet we’ve been through and how we’ve met the match and done the things we need to do,” Lea said Tuesday. “I mean, it is just absurd the idea that we’re going to open the door to teams that play in conferences that aren’t the SEC that have the same record we have. I mean, it’s crazy.

“That is the system, so that’s where the work needs to be focused on — fixing it. But some of the goalposts moving is this idea that the top five conference champions are allowed into the playoff. I’ve seen some projections now with teams that have no business being in, and yet, they’re included.”

Vanderbilt has gone on the offensive in the last two days after routing then No. 19 Tennessee 45-24 last Saturday in Knoxville. The school put out a document making a case for the Commodores’ inclusion in the playoff, and even Chancellor Daniel Diermeier joined the fray.

“The evidence is clear: Vanderbilt has earned its place in the CFP, and Diego Pavia deserves to win the Heisman,” Diermeier said via a social media post.

The Commodores were ranked No. 14 by the selection committee last week before their blowout win on the road over a Tennessee team ranked among the committee’s top 20 teams.

“We’ve had to close the gap to respect,” Lea said. “So we’ve had to play our way into respect, and that gap seemed to keep getting wider. … I think there’s indication there that we’re still not even by the computers respected at a level that we feel like our performance has mandated. So, yeah, it’s frustrating. We felt like coming out of the Texas game that obviously we were disappointed, but we felt like we had everything out in front of us and what we had to do was our part in this, which was win out, and we finished with two dominant performances in the league.

“Some of it is just the silliness of how we’ve settled on trying to make everybody happy and include everybody.”

Lea said having a player the caliber of Pavia should also play a role in determining the 12 best teams if everything else is close. The oddsmakers have Pavia behind Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza and Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin as the favorite to win the Heisman Trophy. Pavia finished the season with four straight 400-yard games in total offense, the first player in SEC history to accomplish that feat. Pavia is second nationally in total offense and averaging 334.8 yards per game.

“I think what the college football world needs is a tournament where Diego Pavia is able to lead his team into competition,” Lea said. “I think it’s really good for the sport if the best player in the country is allowed to lead his team into competition, and because of him, I’ll take this team anytime, anywhere, any place. I mean, every time he has the ball in his hands, I believe we have a chance. I think that’s again something that will draw people in, and it will be a great part of the story of the finish of the season. I hope that those aspects and those elements are taken into account.”

Lea said changing the selection process, where there are no automatic qualifiers, was a hot topic among SEC coaches at their most recent gathering last June at the spring meetings in Destin, Florida.

“I can tell you from a coach’s standpoint that there’s overwhelming support for merit-based selection, meaning to stop trying to create all these automatic bids and there is no safety and there is no security,” Lea said. “You need to play and win in the regular season to have a chance of playing in the postseason, and that’s a coach’s perspective. We’re the competitors. We’re in the arena, and we’re fighting it out and we want to know that on the back end of our performance that we either cross the line or we don’t.”

Lea said the whole idea of administrators from different schools being on the selection committee is flawed.

“Who’s making these decisions? Again, everyone is going to do their best in support of the game, but there are administrators on this committee that are representing programs that we’re competing against for one of those 12 spots,” he said.

As Vanderbilt returned from Knoxville last Saturday, having secured its first 6-2 league record in school history, Lea could only shake his head as he scanned all the projections and the Commodores were given a 10 percent chance of making the playoff.

“Well, as the coach of that team, then I want to take my team somewhere,” he said. “We’ll go on the road. I’ll go to Utah. I’ll go to Miami. I’ll go to Notre Dame. I don’t care. I want to go play those teams and give my group a shot to play into the tournament. That would absolutely be my preference out. And unfortunately, that’s not how it’s set up. So I’ve got to wait on this committee to get together and work through the merits. That is what it is.”