Breakfast of Champions

The 2024 SEC Coach of the Year, Clark Lea enters his fifth season as head coach at his alma mater this fall. Lea engineered one of the nation’s top turnarounds in 2024 as he led the Commodores to their first bowl victory and first winning season in over a decade. Along the way, Vandy was twice named the National Team of the Week, defeated the nation’s top-ranked team for the first time in school history and won at Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium for the first time. The program had its most All-SEC selections since 2013 and held opponents to the lowest scoring average since 2015.

Off the field, Vanderbilt set a program record for Academic All-District selections and had an Academic All-American for the second straight year. Over Lea’s first three seasons in Nashville, the Commodores produced their first road SEC win since 2018, their first home win over Florida since 1988 and earned the Academic Achievement Award for a 100-percent graduation rate.

Before returning to his native Nashville, Lea was an accomplished defensive coordinator at Notre Dame. In his three seasons leading the defense, the Fighting Irish reached double-digit wins all three seasons and made the College Football Playoff twice. Before Notre Dame, Lea spent time as an assistant coach at Wake Forest, Syracuse, Bowling Green, UCLA and South Dakota State.

Following a prep career at Nashville’s Montgomery Bell Academy, Lea won an NAIA National Title on the baseball field at Birmingham-Southern in 2002 before capping his collegiate career as a fullback for the Commodores. He earned his undergraduate (2004) and graduate (2007) degrees in political science from Vanderbilt.