Brian Kelly reacts to former assistant Clark Lea leading Vanderbilt to victory over Alabama
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Brian Kelly had a more unique perspective than possibly anyone on the planet to Vanderbilt’s stunning victory over Alabama last Saturday in Nashville.
You see, Vandy head coach Clark Lea coached under Kelly at Notre Dame for 4 seasons from 2017-20. Lea was Kelly’s defensive coordinator in South Bend for the last 3 of those seasons before taking the Vanderbilt job in 2021. Since that moment, Lea has been building the perennially downtrodden program up to the level it reached last Saturday, when the Commodores shocked the college football world with the upset of then-top-ranked Alabama.
For Kelly, who joined Lea in the SEC the following season in 2022 when he took the LSU job, it was a source of pride to watch Lea put Vandy on the college football map with that victory. Kelly joined “The Paul Finebaum Show” on Monday to talk about a lot of things, and one of the topics was certainly Lea and Vanderbilt.
“Really proud of Clark. He’s worked so hard, and he has such a love for Vanderbilt,” Kelly said. “I know it’s what he wants. He wants to see Vanderbilt succeed, and I think he did a couple of things that were outside his comfort zone.”
Kelly said that Lea handed over some control of the Vandy program during the offseason, especially on the offensive side of the ball.
“It’s still his program,” Kelly said. “He still has a process in place that is highly effective, but I think some of the key additions that he made to his staff in the offseason, we’re seeing that come together.”
Lea and the Commodores will try to avoid a letdown this Saturday night at Kentucky.
[H/T On3]
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
