Mark Stoops on Clark Lea: "I've been in his shoes"

Program building in college football ain’t easy; in the SEC, it’s nearly impossible. Over the past decade, Mark Stoops slowly turned Kentucky from an SEC cellar-dweller into a contender, a program on the precipice of its seventh straight postseason. That transformation didn’t happen overnight, and without the patience of UK’s administration, it might not have happened at all. For that reason, Stoops has a lot of respect for what Clark Lea is trying to do at Vanderbilt.

Lea is in his second season at Vandy, his alma mater. Like Mark Stoops, he’s got a defensive background, serving as the defensive coordinator at Notre Dame before making the move to Nashville. The ‘Dores are 3-6, ahead of last season’s win total of two with three games remaining. They almost beat Missouri on the road two weeks ago. On today’s SEC Teleconference, Stoops praised Lea for the job he’s done so far and said the ‘Dores are better than their record suggests.

“Really have a ton of respect for Clark Lea and the way his team is playing. I know. I’ve been in his shoes taking over a program in this conference that had been struggling mightily and I know how difficult it is. All you have to do is turn on that film and you see Vandy and the tough sledding they have as far as the schedule. They started off really good, winning the first three of four, and just had a gauntlet of a schedule, playing all the top teams in the league, Bama, Ole Miss, Georgia, at Missouri. I mean you go on and on and it’s difficult.

“To see the way their team is playing, to see the effort that they play with it and you could tell by not looking at the scoreboard, they continue to play hard throughout every game and it says a lot about him and what he’s doing with that program, and there’s no doubt he’ll get it turned at some point.”

The respect is mutual.

“This is a good team, Kentucky is,” Lea said on Tuesday. “They have modeled the building of a program with a very similar start to what we have experienced. Coach Stoops has done a great job through consistency and, really, just going through a process of building a program that has become one of the best in the league. They win consistently, they compete, they’re good in all three phrases and certainly, we’re going to have a tough task ahead, but excited for the opportunity to compete with them.”

Watch the latest Mark Stoops press conference on the KSR YouTube Channel.

Vanderbilt searching for consistency

How do you measure success when the challenge of building a program in the SEC at a school like Vanderbilt is so daunting?

“We’d like to obviously measure it with results,” Lea said today. “We’re not getting those right now so we’re looking for positive play and string that out and make it consistent positive play. We have progress measured in speed, in strength. We can see we’re bigger, faster, stronger. Those things are tangible but I feel like we’re at a point now where in flashes we’ll show ourselves to be a good team but we don’t do it consistently enough to win games right now.”

Vandy has lost five straight: at then-No. 2 Alabama (55-3), vs. then-No. 9 Ole Miss (55-28), at then-No. 1 Georgia (55-0), at Missouri (17-14), and vs. South Carolina (38-27). Knocking off a top-ten squad in year two isn’t really a reasonable goal, but Lea thought his team had a shot vs. Missouri and South Carolina.

“We’re about where I thought we’d be,” Lea said. “I knew this season was going to be a challenge but also there were some opportunities and we’ve had some opportunities. Go back to the Missouri game and even this past weekend against South Carolina, there were moments there where we thought we had a chance to put ourselves in a position to win a game but were never quite able to make the play we needed to make. You look at the Ole Miss game and you see the way the team played in the first half and we weren’t quite able to hold the line in the second half. We’re trying to solidify that identity. We’re trying to again, find that level of consistency in our performance.”

Just as long as it doesn’t happen against Kentucky on Saturday.

Subscribe to the KSR YouTube Channel for press conferences, interviews, original shows, fan features, and exclusive content.