Anchor Drop, March 18, 2021: Spring Practice Begins

Good morning.

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Vanderbilt football opened spring practice ahead of the 2021 season, and something was immediately different about it.

Wait, what? A reporter was at spring practice? Well, this is new.

Gone, apparently, is the idea of keeping everything a secret. Clark Lea is going to be open with the media, it seems.

And Clark Lea also had media availability after practice, which vucommodores.com has helpfully made available.

(They also wrote a recap.) And Lea also spoke about why players weren’t wearing jersey numbers in practice.

“We are going to earn everything in this program,” Lea shared when asked why his players didn’t have numbers on their jerseys. “Until we understand that we rent those numbers, we don’t own them, until we are ready to work within them, leave them better for the next person to wear them, that will come. I don’t want to put a timeline on it.

“We are monitoring just the manner in which our players occupy the spaces in this football program and this campus. And that will also not all come at once, right? This will be according to each individual and their commitment level to moving this program forward. The biggest thing for me, we want to strip down all the extraneous right now and just focus on how we are building this team together. The rest of it will come in time.”

Athlon Sports also has a preview of Vanderbilt’s spring practices. Next of the 15 practices is on Friday.

In basketball news, Clevon Brown hit the transfer portal. Like Max Evans, I wasn’t exactly expecting Clevon to come back next season, though entering the transfer portal (with the free year granted to everyone by the NCAA) is a bit of a curveball.

Tim Corbin also had a press conference yesterday, which the Hustler recapped.

Men’s golf took third place at the Tiger Invitational, 13 shots behind host Auburn.

SEC Baseball Last Night

Davidson 9, South Carolina 4.