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Good morning.
Optional Musical Accompaniment
So, Vanderbilt’s coaching search is over. Candice Storey Lee announced former Vanderbilt fullback and Notre Dame defensive coordinator Clark Lea as the Commodores’ 29th head football coach on Monday night, a little over two weeks since the university announced Derek Mason’s firing and also two days before the start of the early signing period. The Tennessean’s Gentry Estes called Lea “clearly the right hire” though there were still detractors, and they were almost entirely people who had been promoting Will Healy:
If #Vandy hires Clark Lea it’ll be in the same situation 5 years from now.
— Austin Stanley (@AustinStanley81) December 14, 2020
Great football coach. But he’s a ball coach. They just fired a ball coach. https://t.co/7pBUzLFaiF
(I mean, is this a tacit admission that Will Healy isn’t a good football coach?)
We also have the reaction from our friends at One Foot Down. I don’t know why, but the super telling part of this hire is how badly Notre Dame fans wanted to keep Clark Lea — versus the “meh” reaction that Stanford seemed to have to Derek Mason’s departure in 2014.
Anyway, we’ll see how Clark Lea fills out his coaching staff over the next few weeks, and that will be our first clue as to whether this will be different from the Mason era. Remember — a lot of Mason’s problems stemmed from rather underwhelming assistant coaching hires.
Moving on, to the surprise of just about no one, Vanderbilt’s season finale at Georgia has been cancelled, meaning that the Commodores finish the season 0-9: the program’s first winless season in history. I’ll have my final thoughts on the season at some point today, now that it’s officially over.
And we finally did lose a recruit, defensive lineman A.J. Campbell, who flipped to UCLA yesterday.
SEC Basketball Schedule
Bad Gambling Advice: Season to Date: 17-24-1 ATS, 19-23 totals
Texas Southern at Auburn (6:00 PM CT, SEC Network+): Texas Southern +13.5, Over 148
Appalachian State at Tennessee (6:00 PM CT, SEC Network): Appalachian State +18.5, Under 130.5
SE Louisiana at Texas A&M (6:00 PM CT, SEC Network+): SE Louisiana +21.5, Under 140.5
Furman at Alabama (8:00 PM CT, SEC Network): Alabama -5.5, Over 151