It appears the practice field in West End will again lack jersey numbers when Clark Lea’s Vanderbilt Commodores kick off fall camp.

SB Nation’s Anchor of Gold noticed that jersey numbers have been removed from Vanderbilt football’s updated online roster. The Dores were numberless during the spring session, which made it difficult for reporters to cover the spring practices and fans to know exactly what they were seeing in the Black and Gold spring game.

Here’s what Lead told reporters about players practicing without jersey numbers in the spring:

“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.”

Hopefully, Commodore players will have their jersey numbers by the time VU plays East Tennessee State on Sept. 4 to open the 2021 season.