"This is a Special One," How Clark Lea, Vanderbilt Football are Preparing for Environment at Virginia Tech
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Nashville—Walk into Vanderbilt’s Tuesday practice and you hear something that you don’t normally hear.
Is that? Enter Sandman? Yep. It is. Over the loudspeakers at Vanderbilt’s McGugin Center, Vanderbilt was playing the tune that it will run out to at Lane Stadium on Saturday night as if it were preparing for that very moment.
Not all that many programs have to imagine what the moment will be like as seemingly Virginia Tech’s entire fanbase is there singing the Metallica song at the top of their lungs as an intimidation tactic, but this one does. Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea wants to flip the narrative around the “has to” part of that sentence, though.
“This is a special one,” Lea said of Vanderbilt’s Saturday matchup at Virginia Tech. “This is a neat college football fanbase and a neat experience. I talked to the team this morning, this is why you’re doing this at this level. It’s so much fun. You’re gonna have a full stadium of people that really care about what’s going on.”
Lea has coached a few times at Lane Stadium over the years and has seen the effect it can have on teams that aren’t–or think they are–ready for it. The palms can get sweaty. The emotions can run too high. The momentum can swing. The pure noise can change a team’s ability to call plays.
As a result, he’s focused on making sure this game is the way it’s supposed to be. It’s supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be high energy. It’s not supposed to be 11 vs. 70,011.
“Not one of those 70,000 people is actually playing the game,” Lea said. “Our focus needs to be on that field and that’ll be the challenge. If we can focus on the field, we can impact the environment. If we’re focused on the environment, we’re going to lose our ability to impact it and we’ll get swallowed up by it. That is what these places do.”
Lea’s last trip to Blacksburg came in 2018 as Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator. The Irish–who eventually made the College Football Playoff that season–went in and won 45-23 in that game.
Vanderbilt knocked off Virginia Tech 34-27 at FirstBank Stadium last season, but Lea says that Brent Pry’s team is “different in a lot of ways” than it was last season after the addition of a new offensive and defensive coordinator. The buzz is likely to be palpable as Vanderbilt enters the stadium on Saturday.
That doesn’t change what it has to do, though.
“We have to stay contained within ourselves,” Lea said. “Everyone doing their job, communicating to connect all the players on the field, now you have a chance to be successful. If you’re not doing that, you all of a sudden allow that stadium, that crowd to become factors in performance and you’re not just battling the 11 guys on the field, but you’ve allowed that 70,000 to get involved, too.”
If there’s a week where Vanderbilt can buy into noise and let it affect how it’s approaching its Saturday matchup with Virginia Tech, it’s this one. Its quarterback is dealing with the fallout of the arrests of his two brothers. It’s going into a place that will be full of people that are against it. It’s facing its first power-five opponent of the season.
It’s also facing off against a team that says it wants revenge against it and is hoping to reverse what happened to it last season as it lost at FirstBank Stadium. As everything works against this group, it has to find a way to come out and do its thing. It has to put its head down and weather the storm.
“We never consider what other people think,” Vanderbilt linebacker Bryan Longwell said. “It only matters what we think in our process and how we’re doing our every day work and getting in and doing our work. It doesn’t really matter what anybody else outside thinks.”
_(1)-b3e453dfe426b2dd4b83a12540ebdb37.jpeg "Joey Dwyer")
Joey Dwyer is the lead writer on Vanderbilt Commodores On SI. He found his first love in college sports at nearby Lipscomb University and decided to make a career of telling its best stories. He got his start doing a Notre Dame basketball podcast from his basement as a 14-year-old during COVID and has since aimed to make that 14-year-old proud. Dwyer has covered Vanderbilt sports for three years and previously worked for 247 Sports and Rivals. He contributes to Seth Davis' Hoops HQ, Southeastern 16 and Mainstreet Nashville.
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