Vanderbilt heads into the 2022 season on a 21-game losing streak in the SEC.

Despite that long streak, Vanderbilt is not focused on the number of games they lost to SEC opponents. Head coach Clark Lea spoke at the 2022 SEC Media Days and fielded a question about his program’s losing streak against conference opponents. He was not concerned about the streak:

“We don’t talk about that. We don’t spend time on that. We don’t tally up the collective records of our opponents. That’s just not who we are. We’re not just fighting to win an SEC game, we’re fighting to become a dominant force within the conference. Obviously winning in the SEC requires winning that first game, but when that happens, it’s not going to be a huge celebration,” Lea said.

Lea is focused on becoming a national force, which will hopefully result in conference wins. Vanderbilt’s last winning season was in 2013.

“We’re going to celebrate everything at a high level, but we’re going to shift focus quickly to the next opponent because that’s what winning programs do. I don’t take ownership of anything that’s happened before. I certainly take ownership of last season. We fell way short of expectations. We are certainly trying to build the best version of Vanderbilt football in Year 2 independent of our opponents and we think if we can reach that level of championship performance within this team and replicated over time we’re going to have a lot of success,” Lea said.

Vanderbilt’s last win in the SEC came against Missouri in October 2019. Missouri was ranked at the time when Vanderbilt knocked them off. Since then, the Commodores failed to win another game in the SEC. Vanderbilt did not win a game in 2020 during Derek Mason’s final season as head coach.

Lea took over a program in 2021 that was struggling. His first season as a head coach was difficult, but he wants to restore a respected SEC program.