Could Vanderbilt be looking to elevate a current SEC assistant to its vacant head coaching role?

According to John Talty and Matt Zenitz from AL.com, Georgia special teams coordinator Scott Cochran “has had contact with at least one person involved with the search” in Nashville, but the possibility of a potential interview is unknown at this time.

A draw for Cochran is that he is a part of the Nick Saban coaching tree, joining Alabama as its strength and conditioning coach in 2007 before reuniting with Kirby Smart at Georgia in February. Cochran was also part of Saban’s staff at LSU in 2003 as he served as an assistant strength coach during the Tigers’ BCS national championship season.

However, Cochran is “a longshot”, according to Talty and Zenitz, likely due to the fact that he had not been a position coach prior to this year. Talty and Zenitz did note that Cochran interviewed for the vacant Southern Miss job, with him turning out to be a “pleasant surprise” to university officials. Southern Miss ended up hiring Will Hall from Tulane, though.

Vanderbilt fired Derek Mason on Nov. 29 after a 27-55 record at the helm of the program he led since 2014, including an 0-8 start to 2020.