Some good stuff here. Especially regarding needing the culture to go with this. To a degree, we do have some of that, in terms of how few guys left both when Kelly left and Fos was fired. Can we keep it, can Chesney build on it? (and yeah, hopefully we keep him, the Penn St situation has me thinking that we had better have him signed, sealed and delivered SOON).
"A YEAR INTO his tenure at Vanderbilt, Clark Lea took to the stage at SEC media days in July 2022 and made a bold proclamation: "Vanderbilt football will be the best program in the country."
The statement drew immediate guffaws...
...Lea didn't care. He had a plan to turn Vandy from a laughingstock into a contender...
...Lea had faced off against the 2021 and 2022 Georgia teams that won national titles. They had third-stringers who were bigger, faster and stronger than most of Vandy's roster. Meanwhile, Lea watched his best players bolt for the transfer portal for two straight years.
"My greatest fears were being realized," Lea said. "We were going to be a developmental program for our conference."
The deck was stacked against him...
...But Lea had been thinking about a new approach, something he had floated in bits and pieces to his athletic director, Candice Storey Lee. If Bama and Georgia could spend big on their third-stringers, couldn't Vandy pay those same guys to be starters?
It's an idea that has caught on at places like Indiana, Texas Tech and Virginia -- all afterthoughts a few years ago but now on the doorstep of the College Football Playoff. The new era of college football -- NIL, revenue sharing, the transfer portal, player empowerment -- has changed the landscape and allowed every team in the country an opportunity to get into the game, as long as the program is willing to ante up."