694: Clark Lea - LIVE! At The 2026 Learning Leader Growth Summit: The Mission Is Winning, Checking the Cabinets, Leading as an Introvert, Alabama Week, Decoupling Worth From Outcomes, and Building a Championship Culture

the purpose of this example, I'm going to.

“If you view yourself as an 8 or a 9, who wants to be a 10, if you're the type of person”

who wants to put a positive dent in the world, then I have something for you. My next book comes out soon. It's called the price of becoming. I love it if you would pre-order it now. Go to Amazon or learningleader.com, all the details on my book, the price of becoming pre-order it now. Thank you. Let's get on with the show. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawke.

Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for sure notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com now onto the night's feature later. He's back. Clark Lee, head football coach of Vanderbilt, spent 14 years as an assistant coaching, including three as the fence coordinator at Notre Dame before returning to his alma mater in 2021 to inherit a program that had gone witness the year before he's now. The back to back, SEC, coach

of the year, and the architect of one of the great turnaround in college football history. We recorded this conversation at our 2026 Learning Leader Gross Summit in Nashville, Tennessee. We're surrounded by members of our Learning Leader Circle while recording it was so cool. There we are, conversation we discussed. Clark's a self-described introvert who was told by a mentor that there are times you're not allowed to be one. He shared how he's grown

into the role. Then from zero wins to beating the number one team in the country, the full story of that Alabama week, the preparation, the game, the practicing and the jubilation afterwards. Then why he had more captains than any team in the country and what that says about how he builds a winning team. Really, really good. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Clark Lee.

What's up, man? I'm so glad you're here. Thank you. I just mentioned the idea that you took over a program that won zero games and had to find a way to turn it around. You also are a local guy here. You care deeply about the place where you're at. What is it like

at the beginning of that process? Right after you get hired, what are the first? I don't

know, the first three days, 30 days, 100 days like, what are you trying to accomplish in that time? First of all, it's so awesome with you guys. This is like a little bit of a dangerous choice by you because you're an SEC country and some people may love me and some people

“may hate me. I'm grateful to be with you. I think in so many ways, when I took the team”

over, I didn't actually know. You get the job because of how you performed as a defense coordinator in my case. There's nothing really that prepares you for what this seat is like. I think a lot of it was just I was pretending to know what I was doing. I did interview like 17 offensive coordinators so that was pretty extensive. I was trying to build a staff. I was thinking about what I wanted. What we were going to tear off the walls. I mean,

it was everything and yet I feel like if I reflect back without judgment because how do you know, I probably screwed 50% of it up, you know. And so it becomes a game of how quickly you can pivot. But as you mentioned, we had a really sick program and so there was a lot of triaging that had to happen. And so I had a little bit of a runway there to make my

“mistakes and to learn from them. I think Candace took a bet on what five years would look”

like not necessarily what year one would look like and I'm grateful for that too. You mentioned you interviewed all those offensive coordinators. So more broadly, maybe you speak to that higher or all of your staff hires. I'm fascinated by the hiring process when it comes to leadership roles. What are some of those must have when you're hiring someone to be a coach on your staff? So much of it is for me has been a journey of really understanding

what I want our program to look like. This is where losing is such a powerful teacher.

And though we don't want to experience it, we we have to. It almost cleanses us or purifies us in certain ways. When you're not having success results, you can make a couple of choices, one of which is to blame other people and their plenty of coaches and leaders to that. You know, I mean, and that actually probably feels a little better. You know, you can take

I don't think that's healthy either or you can say, okay, what am I learning or what

am I meant to be learning right now? This is always what I had in my mind. And I'm a special

kind of screwed up. I'm the Vanderbilt football coach. You guys understand? So like, there's a special kind of maniacal that exists in here, but I felt as though breakthrough was inevitable. So it wasn't a matter of if it was a matter of when I was hopeful that would happen

“while I was here. Because that's how that's how deeply I believed in the potential of the”

place. And so when I was going through these things, I would say, okay, if I could fast forward 15 years and I could look back on this moment, what am I meant to be learning right now that will help me pivot, help me adjust, help me adapt, help me grow, that will lead to that inevitable

breakthrough. So it's always looking or reflecting on the moment from a place in the future

in that place is of success and breakthrough and saying, what is it that I did now? What is it I learned now that allowed the evolution to occur? So to go back and talk about staffing or hiring, which I think is the most challenging thing, but it has become not easier. I've become more effective the more in focus I am and what I want from our program. In 23, we had our second. So we went to intent in 21, 5 and 7 and 22, to intent in 23. And that was kind of the moment where I thought,

okay, I'm not guaranteed kind of the vision I'd had. It's almost like letting go of the expectations that I came in with of like parades and statues and all those things and realizing, okay, this may not happen. What do I want to be proud of in the attempt? That was really helpful to me because you just start to refine or simplify the way you see the world. I want to play good football. I want to be known to be a team that fights and scraps and plays for all four quarters and

is always a tough out. I want to be around a group of people that care about one another.

And I want to feel genuine and authentic. I want to stop with all these facades that I see every day. We'll stop that. I've got to strip mine down too. You know, I've got to enter the building on guard it. So if you're really clear on who you are and what you want, when you pull people in,

“I think it becomes really clear on whether or not they, not just fit, but they can help elevate”

you towards the vision of what you want. And I think the contrast can be dramatic. The more we are very specific about who we are and what we want, the more anything that doesn't like look like sound like talk like that becomes easy to say discard. There's three things that light me on fire every single day about coaching. The first of the three is relationships. And that means that I need people that are willing to create a sense of belonging for someone else. Will they sit

with the person, see them for who they are, see them for what they want in the world and realize they are a conduit to that outcome. Think about the responsibility embedded in that. Think about the honor it is to steward that kind of journey, but that's ours. So that relationship matters. We spend so much time parenting our own kids. The role is to parent other people's kids. And it can't be manipulative. It can't be do this because it's what I want. It's do this because

it's in your best interest. So relationships first, second is this technical aspect of coaching. And this is true across any field. It just so happens like we play football and there's footwork and there's pad level and there's strike points and there's all these things that are fundamental technical. When I learned as a coach that I could build skill in another human, that I could help them acquire skill to help them navigate a play, I became like just totally nerdy

about it. And so that started for me with this talent code by Daniel Coil, which was like a game changer for me, just learning the science of building skill, the wrapping of myelin, all the things, the spirit of repetition. So the technical parts of it, I need to hear fascination from a person, a coach, a curiosity, someone in search of a better way to do it. And the third is the tactical or the teaching. Those three things, you know, they need to have demonstrated ability to

navigate the relationships. They need to have a curiosity for the technical and I need the clear communication that this guy is going to take hard things and make him simple. Can they chunk the information, can they communicate in a way that's consistent and repetitive? Those were kind of the

“foundation of what a coach in our program looks like. In addition to that, it's like, you have to”

be a little maniacal alongside me. And I don't do this in like dumb ways and I'm not one of those guys where it's like, it's fourth and goal every day in the office, like I don't live that way,

That team has a deep belief in what's possible at Vanderbilt because for forever, the world has told us what's impossible there. And so we have to be able to reject external narratives and focus only

“on what we're doing inside. And in that way, we're kind of like building a cult, I think. So anyways,”

we were talking before and I just thought of the curiosity, it's one of my favorite things about you is how curious and kind and generous you are, but also you'd think with all this success, you're like, all right, people are just going to come to me and ask me questions and yet I ask where have you been, you know, he's been on the road, what you've been up with the Milwaukee Brewers, you're going to go with the Baltimore Ravens, you're still out there searching to learn what was like you just got

back from Milwaukee, what's the purpose of going there? What did you learn when you were there from those specific guys? So Milwaukee's a small market team that has navigated to high level success. This was kind of a happenstance connection for us that someone who cared about our program, who was also kind of tied to the Brewers thought it would be a good marriage. I went and saw

him for the first time last spring in Arizona and I then went to Milwaukee in June last year,

went back to Arizona in the spring and just spent my second weekend in Milwaukee last weekend. The ball is different, the problems are the same. And I think this is true in these environments too. I think if you really take time to listen to other leaders, you realize like, oh, like this is all kind of the same what we're doing, but specifically with what the Brewers all for first whole Pat Murphy's their manager, he is the best at navigating. We are close because within 10

minutes he had me peg. And to be honest with you, I think I had him peg too and that's where we connect is like reading human behavior, reading questions, looking into curiosity, realizing there's real synergy there. The human parts of leadership, the human parts of sport, he is a mastermind. And then on the front office side, you have a group of people who are insanely smart, who have created these systems that support winning on the field. And they're doing

it, I think, better than anyone else in that league. And I don't know much about the major leagues, but you can look at the the amount they're spending on the roster and the productivity and their wins and realize these guys are crushing it. So every time I'm with them, there's one or two things that I'll take away that I think can help us evolve a system or change a perspective

“with how we're approaching a problem. And when I go on these trips, that's what I'm looking for.”

How are they seeing the world? To be honest with you, sometimes it's easier for me when the ball is different because I don't walk in with this preconceived understanding of what they're doing. I actually walk in like trying to orient myself. And that means I ask a ton of questions.

And that kind of starts a process for me where I'm pulling on a thread. And ultimately I get to

where, okay, this is how we might be able to apply this perspective or this vantage point and what we're doing to. Where's some of your favorite questions to ask? You know, typically like I'll start I mean, honestly, and I just go back to this weekend, you know, and I'm sitting with the R&D group at the brewers. I don't know if you guys remember this movie. Looks like we're all about the same generation here. Unfortunately, that means I'm getting old. But sorry, that was a shot at you guys.

“You guys are too polite. Yeah, so office space. And I mean, this is the worst. You guys remember that”

movie. Okay, thank you. God, I went out on the limb there and you, you rescued me. And don't judge me from my taste in movies either, but it's a classic. It's a classic. So you remember the two guys they were brought in as consultants and they're meeting with everyone like, what do you do? What do you do? Yeah, they're in the box. Oh, this is great. I like to start with like, tell me what you do. You know, like, and in almost, I thought about this this weekend because I'm like these guys

probably think that Matt Arnold, the GM, is planted me here to check in on productivity. There's so much I don't understand. One of the things I love about that group is like how, again, fascinated these guys are with their roles and how interested they are at answering questions. What I want in our program is to have a group of people that are constantly thinking about what questions need to be answered. It's like knowledge is limiting. Once I know something, I stop to pursue it. I think that's a

really important thing, but when I have a question, it illuminates. I can chase that question for a

long time. And so I think the questions we ask are the first kind of constraints we put on

the knowledge we attain and how we understand the world. And so I want to know what kind of questions they're asking. What are they answering for? What are the problems they're solving for? When I sit

with like players or you know in our in our world, how quickly can I get past kind of like the touchy feeling good stuff and get to like hey tell me what screwed up here. You know like I want to hear the worst of a player behavior or a point of failure because now we can create

“relatability. Oh man, I've experienced that too. And you start to realize that like I think we”

live in a world where we think our problems are all our fault and they're not. What we are is problem solvers. So I tell our staff all the time that the problems are there. It's just whether or not you're willing to look for them. We say in our program so they got got a little manual that we go through and it has some principles for our staff. One of them is check the cabinets.

That that came from when my wife and I were in LA together living together for the first time.

We had it was like maybe 700 square feet, one bedroom like it was tight. It was on the 12th floor. We were looking west and Santa Monica. I was working at UCLA at the time. Big kind of high rise building there and we're making dinner one night. I go to the cabinet with the pots to get a pot. I go down to get it and what I find like just thousands of these little roaches running around. Sorry if this is I should have given a warning beforehand. But there's good news.

I call down to the front desk and I say hey we got a problem here. All right here's the deal. Take everything out of your apartment. Put it on the balcony. Be out of your apartment by 8 a.m. Don't return until 8 p.m. We'll come and fumigate and we'll make sure the roach should

not. So we do it. We get back that night. Sure enough they're gone. Bring everything back in.

Life goes on. About, you know, a couple of months later in the kitchen. Bam, cabinet open. What is it? Roaches. Again, call down. Move your stuff out. 8 a.m. Come back 8 p.m. They'll be gone. Sure enough. Like magic. They're gone. Come back. We've everything back in. We're going a month later. You know, what do we do? Open the cabinet. They're the argument. So, you know, like I took me a while to figure this out. But those roaches aren't leaving. They're just going

to someone else's apartment. You know, and then they're coming back. And it gets to the point where

“you have to make a choice. And that choice is like am I just going to move the pots out of that”

cabinet and stop checking or am I going to go through this exercise every time? And I think they're so much captured in leadership that way. We can't grow tired of checking the cabinets. And we want to feel like we reach a point with our teams where we're arrived and everyone knows what to do.

And the truth is we'll never be without our problems. So let's make sure we're stepping into

them checking the cabinets and where we find them don't be surprised. It's not an indictment of you. Your job is actually the solve form. One of the cool things I was reading about you and have learned about you is I think you're more naturally self-described as an introverted person. And you were working for Rick New High as well when you had that job at UCLA and Rick gave you some advice about this introversion, extroversion thing. Can you tell more about how he helped you

maybe be more extroverted as needed? Rick taught me how to give a campus tour. I don't know if any of his stories were true. You know, he went to UCLA. I don't know that they were true or not true. That wasn't the point. He'd totally great story. And being with him and those in those instances taught me a lot about I don't know maybe some of the performative parts of what we do but like Rick would have everyone up to his house for like a staff get together and

and then he'd get his guitar out. Do you guys know who Rick is? Some of you, so you know you've seen him probably play the guitar on TV or whatever. He'd pull his guitar out and it was like mandatory that everyone had to carry okay. And so all of a sudden, you know, I'm up there with a microphone and I'm into seeing what Rick. Those are things for me. I don't, it's funny. I coming in, this is Printer's Ali and there was a great karaoke bar here when I was a college that we would

come to at times. It's a different phase of life. I don't typically get out and sing much these days. I started to disappoint you if you thought maybe I'd carry a tune here. But Rick pushed me in those ways. There were other things too. He had a really interesting perspective about being positive coaching from a positive angle and we were working like some little kids camp launched and I was trying to get it, this is before I was making any money and

“I just remember he was coaching me coaching these little kids and not to go too far into it,”

but just to say like he understood the importance of manifesting what you wanted to have happen. Stop telling him what not to do. Tell him what to do. Tell him what you want to see. That was Rick and as different as we are or were, I mean we're still very close, but

You coached with Brian Kelly at Notre Dame, correct me if I'm wrong. I read that one of your

things that you loved about him is he gave you a shot. You wanted a shot. What did you learn from that experience being a linebacker coach getting promoted via defensive coordinator coaching with Brian

“Kelly? Again, here's another person that is so impactful and important in my life and”

my career who if you put us next to each other, I mean I couldn't be kind of more different than B.K. Love them, but we're different people. I'm the kind of person that if you come in and tell me I'm doing a good job, I'll run through whatever wall you want me to run through. His language is more transactional. So when he would give me a nice bottle of wine, what he was saying to me is

hey, you're doing a great job. I didn't know how to translate that though, you know, because I didn't

the gift wasn't what I was looking for. I was in a situation where I was elevated and I'd worked with a guy named Mike Elco. Mike Elco and I were together at Bowling Green at Wake Forest. I went to Notre Dame with him. Mike now is the head coach at A&M. He's another really good friend of mine. When Mike chose to leave, I think there were a lot of places that B.K. could have gone to hire a bigger name and he chose to make a bet on me. And you're nothing without people seeing

“the potential in you. And I think we got to remember that we're on this side of a two because”

everyone needs an opportunity and he gave me that. And yet, you know, I will tell you that I had to earn his respect and his trust. That was not straightforward. We didn't default to that. Let's just say. So that led, there were a number of times where he would come in office, shut the door and just, you know, come at me for something that was, you know, some nuance that was tactical that we were doing or not doing that, you know, he wanted to push me on. I realized after a while that those

were all like little tests and what he was seeing was my ability to hold the line and to be able to communicate what I believe in and what I see how I see the world rather than just deferring to him. And so that was challenging to me. But in time and especially as our defensive units performed, I earned that trust. This guy helped me incredibly, not just in situations where I had a family issue and I needed to be with them or whatever the case may be. But in ways where when it came time

for me to interview for coaching jobs rather than him kind of steering me away, like he got right in my hip-hop and said, let me help you. Let me show you. Let me talk to you about this. And you don't see

“that very often. I think a lot of times people are protective of their assets rather than, you know,”

seeing what I wanted in life and helping me go pursue it. So BK is a polarizing public persona who is a dear friend of mine and someone that, you know, I would not be sitting here with you without him. And I'm grateful for him. I'm grateful for his leadership. I'm grateful for the potentially saw me and the opportunity gave me to help reach for it. We've talked about the importance of having a player lead team and takes the lead or the coach to empower. Did I read this

that right that you had more team captains in 2025 than any team in college football? Is that accurate? I don't know that that's accurate, but it sounds about right. Can you talk to me about what's the idea of the philosophy behind having a lot of team captains being a team led by your players? Yeah, so leadership is such a funny thing. Especially when it comes to these like, you know, nominated positions, we're going to start a process this summer with this team where I sit in a room with somewhere

in the neighborhood of 25 people that I've identified as having leadership potential/impact in the

locker room. So to me, more is more in this case because the first thing I'll say to him is hey,

here's the reason this is important and this will set the course for like kind of weekly connections. No matter what happens in that locker room, if the people around this table, if we're good, then we're good. You know, if there's an issue in here, we need to talk about it so that we can leave the room good and I know the team will be good. One of the things I came across early in my head coaching careers and this may be unique to me and it may be unrelatable to you, but I've got

a unique ability to convince myself that the world is falling like I can start to spiral on little behavioral inputs where like someone gets in trouble for something and it's all the sudden I've convinced myself that we won't want to game because I've lost the locker room and the culture's bad and the counter balance and that's so unrealistic, but that's just the way I'm wired. The counter balance for me to that is to actually go one by one through the roster and say,

into this guy, you know, he cares about this so much and over time you realize, oh, it's one or two people. So let me not change my perspective because I want to two people think it's appropriate to talk about my time as a coordinator where I was holding it so tight. I was literally suffocating myself. I was not having any fun because it was all pressure that I was putting on myself to get to the next. I knew I was so close to my dream. Now my dream was not two and ten, five and seven and two

and ten. That's all another story about what our dreams actually feel like when we're living them.

But I was so close and I was holding it so tight and I was, I can remember it was our first game

in 2018. My first game is coordinator was against Michigan and leading up Thursday typically it had been like family night for us or like go home at a decent time, like have a beer with my wife. She makes homemade pizza. The kids are running around. We're having fun. And I think that night that Thursday before Michigan, I came home at like two in the morning and she shot up out of bed and she was crying and I was crying and she's like, what's wrong with you and I'm like, I'm so stressed

out. I can't. And we had a mental performance coach at the time who my wife sets me like,

“my wife knows that I'm screwed up. So she's like, you need to go speak to this mental performance”

coach next day. I find her and I say, we need to talk. So we start walking around. She said, what's on your mind? I said, well, like, you're going to think I'm crazy when I tell you and she's like,

no, I won't. I said, okay, I said, here's what I think's going to happen. I think we're going to be

down 50 to nothing and half time. I think they're going to actually be case in a call me out of the box, like the walk is shame down the stands onto the field and actually send me to the locker room, fire me on the spot. I think on the way that a locker room in the tunnel are going to be all the Notre Dame grades. Jerome, Betus, you name them. Rocket-ish mail. And they're going to be yelling at me and telling me how I'm not worth whatever you guys understand. And she listens to all this and she

goes, okay. And she said, but why don't you trust your players? You just think this is all about you. You don't think this is important to them. Like, they haven't worked hard for this. It's interesting to hear you talk about this because it's all about you. So where do they fit in this? And it was like this epiphany for me. Oh my god, I'm not alone in this. Actually, I really need to be good in my job, not for me, but for them because they're the ones that have invested in this. They're the ones

that have blood for this. And now let me do this in service to them, not in service to myself. That

switch is a powerful switch. So with leadership in captains, it's important to have as many as I feel

like, doesn't exclude people, but I don't want to do it in a way that's inauthentic. So what we do is we take a vote and I just draw lines. And wherever that line falls, if I feel like, let's say, 60 votes is a line because after it's 60, there's 30. If you guys understand, I'm saying, 60 is going to be a line. How many people are above that? We're going to take on. If there's a bigger discrepancy, if there are fewer people voted for, then that, you know, we're going to have fewer

people look captain this year. I forget, I think we had eight, I believe after, or before the Utah State game, I added a center who was undoubtedly a locker room leader for us. He deserved to be a captain on our football team. And so I wanted to honor that. The players will see through anything that's fake. So if I'm trying to annoy someone that doesn't deserve it or I'm playing favorites, I take myself out of it. All I'm response for is drawing the line. They vote, the whole program

“votes. That's how we determine who's out there. You talked about the first three years. So you come in”

and it wasn't this beautiful turnaround immediately. After the 2023 season, you have seven starters going to the transfer portal. But after the 2024 season, you had one. What was the biggest difference between 2023 and what you did, what the team did, what your staff did, the players did from 2024 to have seven starters lead, which is wild to then only having one. I'm embarrassed. I'm learning a lot about my program from your research. In 2023, so what we had done was we had,

there was kind of two things converging. All right. We had demonstrated progress to intend five and seven. That five and seven season, mind you, we lost the three teams, combined like 155 to three. That was Alabama on the road, George on the road, Tennessee at home. I mean, there was a still a huge gap between us in the top of our league. But in my mind, saw progress and thought double down on everything.

“So I didn't evolve systems. There's a great lesson in that. You know, I think our scrutiny”

can't be about strictly about results. We have to have the ability to see down the road and see what amplifying a system or retaining a system does in time. I was wrong and doing that. I thought

program and we didn't have a plan for portal. And you may say, like, I don't know what you say to

“that, but that was just the world we were living in. We went from a really clean learning environment”

where repetitions mastery to the book range talks about a wicked learning environment, where every day the rules change. And so we didn't have a blueprint for this. And, you know, Vanderbilt's a great school and there are a lot of great business people that are alums of this school. And, you know, those great business people aren't really interested in funding a college football roster as it turns out. So we had some work to do to create vision for how this was going

to help everyone involved. So you're one. We lose our best offensive linemen transfer to Alabama.

Year two, we lose our thousand yard rushing running back transfer to Kentucky. I had an undrafted

fridge and graded linebacker who was a captain for us and a great leader who was a great counterbalance in a lock room that was still toxic because my thing was retain retain retain. All right. And that's because that was a blueprint. And also because I was serving the wrong master to me retention was about my players affirming my value. If that makes sense to you. Like, when you leave, you're telling me that I'm not good enough for you. That's a in my mind. That's a

problem. I've had to work through that to get to a point where I understand that that's actually a healthy part of what we're doing. But we didn't have systems of retention. We didn't have systems

of a transaction. And so we kind of flushed out the productive part of our roster. We lost

important leadership pieces. We had this young group that had come in that was not yet ready to take the reins. And we had retained productive players who were toxic in the lock room. And that that set the course for this 2023 season where when you look at that year, we actually played tighter in games. We won two games. We lost a heartbreaker on the road at UNLV and lost a sloppy game at Wakeforce. But what I saw in that season was like, this team doesn't play the game the way

that I want a team to play, connected. So all the things I said earlier, connected, competitive, all that stuff. So to answer this question, we pivot on systems. I hire a new string coach. I hire a new office coordinator. I take over the defense. And I'm going to be honest, it would be way cooler if I could tell you. And I got rid of a bunch of guys. And you know, that was the

“right thing. But the truth is, I didn't want anybody to leave. I was still in this mode of like,”

please, you know, tell me I'm good enough for you. And so I think every player that came in, maybe Sam's one or two, I'm trying to convince that, oh, hang in there. We're going to get there. We lost those starters because the program needed to move on. And I was enabled to do that for myself. And so the universe did it for me. That's how I see it. The universe doesn't ever make a mistake. I couldn't purge the program because I had my own identity wrapped up in it.

So the universe did it for me. And what we did in place of that was we went out and found people that aligned with our culture environment, attitude, mentality that put on the field, the program that we wanted to represent Vanderbilt football and also set a course for those young players to come along and to be a part of something that actually had identity in substance. So retention is both about strengthening our resources, which we did from year one to year two, but also about winning

having to be a part of your culture. There's no culture without winning. That sounds like all result. I'll all I'm telling you is when I talk to my team, the mission is winning. The mission is winning. That is about Saturdays in the fall, but it is about every other day too. What is winning looked like today? How does winning impact every dollar we spend, every person we retain, every coach we hire? Everything that we do needs to work through this mantra, this lens of the

“mission's winning. And through that simplification, right? That's what that is to me. I mean,”

we had a mission statement that was like the most eloquent, beautiful thing you'd ever read. And yet, it was unclear. Our mission is winning is pretty clear. Now, my job is to measure everything against that mission, and that actually is what ripples into results. Was it contentious going through the change through NIL, transfer portal, where you didn't have the resources, you didn't have the money? And so I think that could be relatable for people if they're not the person, because

you're in charge of the football program, but you have bosses too. Sure. So you had to kind of advocate for yourself, for your coaches, for your players, and literally get the money. What was that process like? You're stewarding partnerships. So I think there are plenty of coaches that

be somewhere in states somewhere, because I always have wanted to be a part of something that

feels like community. And I didn't draw a line in the sand with Candice, our AD, or certainly the chancellor, but I did communicate what I needed. And I told Candice in the winner of 23. So as we had lost or running back and lost players that we wanted to retain, I said to listen, if we don't have $3 million by December of 23, we won't have a program. Now, to say $3 million now is like, oh my god, but in one week, $3 million became $6 million. That was the week of December

where we were trying to figure out a path through. And so this is just how I operate. It's like, I'm recruiting people into the vision. I'm stewarding partnerships. I want this to feel collaborative.

When I was at my worst Candice was at her best. You know, she didn't come down and say,

you better figure this out. She was just a resource of mentor in those moments where I was trying to find the path through. And so that's my angle. That's my approach, which means I'm going to concede losses sometimes in that partnership. I'm not going to get everything I want, you know. And

“I think that approach has helped us. Obviously, I think it's gotten us to a point where we're”

starting to look like our peers. I think it's failed me at times because I haven't been clear enough. And I think my job is to be really clear on what it's going to take. But what I've appreciated is as the results have shifted. And as everyone's seeing the benefit of what a high-level football program can do, there's less conflict that goes in. I mean, there's more shared awareness of

what this needs to be. And the initial shock of like adding $3 million, adding $6 million to a

budget line. Obviously, now we have $20 million that's revshare. Plus, on top of that, I think we're all kind of adjusting to the temperature of the water together. You mentioned Candace, are you believe the most effective athletic director in college sports? If you look at all of the sports here at Vanderbilt, basketball, baseball, I mean, it's incredible what she's done. Why do you think she chose to hire you? I don't think she wanted to hire me. I think, and I

think she, I shouldn't say it that way, I don't know that she set out to hire the defensive coordinator from Notre Dame. We cross paths that Vanderbilt only a short time, so it wasn't like a deep-held connection. I think she wanted to hire a winner. I think ideally that winner would be someone who'd been ahead coach before, and ideally it'd be someone who had some offensive experience. I went through the process of zoom meetings, you know, in a couple of those, and then

“in person with her and the chancellor, and I think there was just such synergy there. I remember”

sitting with her in the interview, we probably could have spent the whole day just talking philosophy and talking about what we wanted this to look like and what Vanderbilt needed, and I think she was moved by that connection, the same way I was moved by that connection. She is the best human emotional leader I've ever encountered, and like I said, when I'm at my worst, she's at her best, and so she took a bet on somebody that she believes in time would be the kind of leader that

could win at Vanderbilt, and keep in mind too, she was like a year ahead of me in her journey as athletic director. So I think there's a trust built in the relationship, and I think there was this awareness that like she was learning her job, I was going to have to learn mine, but that we were going to really create strength and partnership together to navigate, you know, what was the heart, I mean this has been the toughest challenge in the country is getting this program turned around, but she deserves

we don't talk enough about how great candidacy is, and when I came time to renegotiate contract and go through this process and the fall, which was excruciating, I mean excruciating,

“I did not undervalue that relationship. I think I get to work for someone who I believe in without hesitation”

and who supports me in ways that I can't imagine what that looks like at other campuses, and so she deserves all the credit. I'm going to ask another one, but then I'll open it up because I know there's probably some questions, so just start thinking, take me to you're playing, you come off these tough years, right? You have this mission, you have this vision of how to do it, eventually you beat the number one team in the country, your students carry the goal post and

whatever dump it in the water, whatever they did, it was crazy. Can you take me into that week? The prep, the execution of the plan, the locker room after, I mean there's the greatest moment, I mean I get emotional just thinking about some of those moments as a player, what was that week like?

plus I think around 25 total players thereabouts, we go out, we hire Tim back from New Mexico State, I bring Jerry Killen as a consultant, and then as it turns out we also harvested some of that roster, it's where Diego probably came from, you lost hours, and came young and others, and then we, we got to work, and I was reconnecting with being a play caller and being a coordinator, also realizing that I hadn't really done the head coaching job very well, so I can't

lose growth in development there, there's just so much I'm known, and we get through the summer,

first games against Virginia Tech, and we, we had belief, the first time I talked to Diego,

do you guys know who Diego is? Am I talking to a room that, okay, first time I talked to Diego on the phone, he said to me, at the end of the conversation, Coach, I looked forward to coming to Vanderbilt and helping you win championships, and he like hesitated before he said it, it was so genuine. It was like the first time that I had talked to someone, like especially in a recruiting sense, where I wasn't having to convince them of what we could do at Vanderbilt, that meant the world to me,

and yet here's a guy that two years later is a high-spin finalist, and I told him, hey, you're not guaranteed the starting job, you're going to have to compete and earn it to have a

“chance to play at Vanderbilt, so that's how much I knew about Diego. We get to the Virginia Tech game,”

there's a lot of hope, and we take a 17-3 lead in that game, and like we are like beating them, and it feels great, and yet we don't, I mean, to say we didn't know how to win is like an understatement, you know, and so everything unravels in the second half, and I'm talking about the full catastrophe of things. You lose the lead, we got emotional on the sideline, we got guys arguing with each other, there's players crying, I mean, it is a circus, okay, which is kind of

anti-chlorically, but at this point, I mean, the wheels are off, you know, so we find a way to get it back together, Diego drives down scores, we tie the game, and we go to overtime, we win it, and overtime.

I mean, I'll never forget that feeling, and I don't think it could have happened in the other way,

we needed that catastrophe, we needed doubt to creep into the equation, because it gave us a chance to reject all the demons that had haunted us in the past. First game is coach, we're playing East Tennessee State, they take a lead like in the third quarter, something like that, and I looked, turned around and looked on the sideline, I mean, the level of defeat on that sideline was like, I thought, oh my god, I'm alone. And so to be able to battle back and to exercise

“some of those demons, I think, was really important for us. We turn around the next week, and we”

beat all cornstate at home, and then we go on the road and we play Georgia State, a team that we beat somewhere in the ballpark of 70 to like 20 this year, I forget the final score. We go down to Atlanta, we get beat by Georgia State, and then it's embarrassing, and it's to credit to them, but we did not show up to play. So there's this inability to understand what it takes weekend, we got to win. I think the minute you start forecasting, you're done, and I think

our guys thought because we had beat Virginia Tech and one game too that we were, it was inevitable, and we needed to be humble than we were. We turned around the next week and we lose a double over time game on the road against Missouri. Obviously, super tight, we miss a fuel goal to tie it. And so that's where we were. We had a buy week, I remember the team meeting on the buy week was like, hey guys, here's the reality. I think at the time we were like last in the country and penalties,

we had not performed well on third down on offense. There was like three things. We do a well better learned after every, that's our after-action review and everything. So what do we do well, what do we need to do better, what do we learn, what do we learn about ourselves? And I mean,

“that is applied in every system process that's executed, that's what we work through.”

And the better was like, we have to eliminate penalties all three phases. We have to play better on third down offensively and too many times the ball's compromise. We had to turn over against Georgia State a couple of times because Missouri is on the ground, whatever. And the learned was like, we're this close and yet this may be the hardest gap for us to close. Here's how we're going to do it, correcting these mistakes, doubling down on the things that have gotten us this point. But being

like really focused on our discipline, pre-snap post-nap, really disciplined on the valuating

our systems, it also execution and critical points, whatever. We go through the buy week,

we come back on Sunday to do Alabama practice one and it was raining that day and we went out on

believed, I had a team that saw what was possible, I had a team that was looking to close that gap.

And I told him that afterwards, you know, I said, if we can replicate this through the week, we're going to win the game on Saturday. That's going to happen. My job each week is to not tell them necessarily the challenges but to give them the plan to win. So we approach every week, as though the wins and even when we were two in ten, I remember what it was like to be 22 and when you're 22 years old, you don't want an old guy to tell you what the limitations are, what's not possible.

I wanted people to tell me what we could get done and then show me how we're going to do it. So that's my job. And so in the Alabama game, that game is probably like the outlier to end all outliers. I mean, if you look at the statistics in that game, how we controlled the game offensively, how efficient we were in scoring touchdowns, it's pretty remarkable. How a depth we were on defense that not allowing the exposed to touchdown. There were times, I mean, things you wouldn't notice but I mean,

we allow a chunk gain into red zone territory and then we force another like two and a half minutes off the clock because we're just forcing them to line up and snap it. When a game where you have a lead, as you're draining that clock out on defense, you're creating angst on the other side,

you know, and now I've got an offense. It's executing on third down. We're not compromising the ball.

You know, we played a clean game, didn't have penalties. And at halftime, it was like, yeah, I could feel the energy of the room, you know, like it was so tangible. And I felt it before. In fact, I felt it Virginia Tech to be honest with you, that first game. And what happened in the second half of that first game was it all fell apart. Okay, because we start projecting or forecasting. And so I just, I got them together on a knee. I got everyone this quiet.

And I said to them, guys, it's right there for you. It is on a team. And we don't have to do anything special to close this out. There's nothing beyond just the focus and the execution that

“we'll deliver this. It's on a platter for you to go take it. And that's what we did. And we punched”

in counter punched. And we were able to like hold off the huge momentum swing that could happen. And

and then the celebration and all celebrations, including the students marching the goal posed down, but though in the water. And that is such a special moment. People tell me like, coach, I was sitting in my green chair. And that was my lucky chair. And I didn't move and I had to pee, but I didn't go to the bathroom. I'm like, oh, that's not sustainable, you know. But I mean, these are moments. And this is the beauty of what I get to do.

Outside of just the interpersonal parts, like the really special stories that emerge when you're against stewarding a journey for a young person and helping them navigate most of we get 18, 17 to kind of 22 year olds. And you're actually not set in stone yet, which is beautiful. Because all of us carry trauma from childhood. A lot of us who are high-level athletes carry trauma from the sport we played in part of my responsibility is to help these players on

tangle that and to create a healthy relationship, both with the people around them, but also with the game that they play and they love. And so that's so meaningful. But I get to do something with a community on Saturday. Now that the hard part is when it doesn't go well, you know, there's another side to this. But to create those memories and to share those memories with

“people is really special. And I'll tell you, I haven't fully understood that game yet. I think I”

will in 20 years when I look back. But for me, it kind of blends into a season that was really special. And there are a number of things I can point to and say, man, I'm so proud of this program that go beyond just beating the number one team. And the country sometimes I feel like that game gets undue attention because the narrative around beating, it's like about the opponent. It's not about Vanderbilt. You know, and I tend to hang onto the thing, the stories that

actually are about Vanderbilt. And so that's kind of how I view that game. Questions? Go ahead, Rob. Diego is a big voice in your team and kind of that identity leader and you're lost in this era. Moving on, who are you excited about that? You might feel that that leader role. We won't be able to replace Diego because there's one of him that I've met that's alive in the world.

“I'm worried about this, honestly. And this is in constant messaging with the team.”

We talk about relatedness in our program, relatedness is our edge. How do we create community create belonging? I gotta tell you, how do we live in a way that we're seeing and we see others

that what I do impacts of people that I love. And Diego was masterful at creating these quite

connections. And if he walks in our building, if he walks in behind him, he is going to talk to every person. It could be the new training intern. It could be the seventh string kicker. He doesn't

“care. It's part of the team. And for him in the profile he took on, especially I think that's so”

speaks to the kind of environment he helped create. Because relatedness, like we have to account for that, because teams that are connected when, teams that are connected, I shouldn't say teams are connected. Teams that are connected have meaningful experiences. And so we'll create connection by everyone going a little further. But no one's going to be able to carry the weight that he carried. And so this summer will be about how we how we commit to the love and affection we have

for one another, independent of anything that happens in the fall. And we'll have ways that we do that. As a team, in addition to the training that we have to do. Alex. You talked a lot about decoupling your worth and identity from outcomes. And I can tell like, personally you've had this, but you also talked about like helping your athletes kind of overcome this. Now I'm curious, like what methods you just like instill more in that thing just when you think.

Yeah, I mean, this is like until you do work on yourself, you can't understand the things that are inside of you that motivate you or that stain you in ways that steal your joy, I guess, for lack of a better way to put it. I've had to do a lot of work. And I'm going to tell you, we could talk for six hours about how we quietly create the life through our thoughts, words and actions. And we don't process what we're doing, but we're doing it every day. And

just in terms of our program, maybe I'll use this as an example. And I can apply this on a personal level too that I don't know that is right for the moment, but what you can't do is, so I took the Vanderbilt job and I'm hyper aware of the Vanderbilt past and I rejected that past at every turn, even from the standpoint of like you'll see some of these teams and it's like team 132 and it's like they're celebrating this story tradition, meaning this is a 130

second time, this football team has been assembled. Like I erased all that when I got there and

“it's like team one, you know, that's when I think about it. It's like very arrogant, but it wasn't”

meant to be that wasn't the point, you know. So every prism, every lens through which I made a decision, what did they do before? Oh, they were red, we're going to wear green. Oh, they went left, we're going to go right. It's like you're just constantly trying to deviate from what had

defined the program in the past, but here's what I learned and I think I've learned, I'm not

I think, I mean, I have learned this on a personal level 10 fold that when we try to go opposite what we're looking to avoid, we eventually what become it. We form in the mirror image, so at the end of day what you're doing is you're attaching your identity to that what you're trying to avoid. And so rather than do that, instead can we plot each day with this vision, this, the ideal. This is what we want to create. It may include some of the elements of the past. In fact,

I just stopped paying attention to what they did in the past and just focused on, I want this to be this way. That actually gives us a chance to create something that we're proud of. I have spent a lot of time working on myself. There are things that got me to Vanderbilt. I go back to Notre Dame holding it too tight, putting the pressure on myself. I look back and

“that's all a blur. I can't even remember enjoying it. And I realized early on that what got me here”

won't keep me here as I've grown the program's ground. Once I understood that about myself,

I could sit with the player and listen to them first, which is, you know, like, I don't think

we do that enough for me. I literally, like, not like, hey, bro, how's it going? You know, it's like, hey, come in here. I mean, they know when they come in my office, like, clear your schedule. You know, because we're going to spend time. And so I started helping them by listening to them. I stopped looking to them for affirmation. I share with them openly about the things I battled both in my professional life, but also when I was 18, 19, 20, I don't hold back. They

know everything about me. I mean, I cry in front of them. I, you know, I mean, they know. And it's not like it's just, I want them to see a man, a human. My kids are around all the time,

engage with me. He loves that. And it gives them a chance to see the fact that I'm a son.

You're these are common threads. And so I have spent a ton of time with the players who have sent signals to me that they need conversation. And when I do that, I listen, and I try to identify where those little, like, it doesn't take long to hear someone talk to realize, oh, okay, this is a dad issue. I don't feel valued because I'm not playing or whatever. I mean, and so then you say, like, let me explain how I've experienced this in the past, or let me

and solely but surely you gain trust and you give them a chance to see the world without that kind of taken in this. That's the worst explanation, but that is kind of what I do. Yeah. Yeah, good day.

Yeah, and you work under some very distinct personality between Rick and Michael and Brian Kelly.

How did that shape you when you were bringing on your staff and bringing on and taking chances on people like Nick Lizinski who had been up and met a GA before that, and now he's your coach, you know, the coordinator, and how did that, and how did those experiences from your leadership

“help you develop his team? So are you a Notre Dame fan or a Vandal fan?”

All right. Okay, because I knew if you're bringing up Nick Lizinski, you got to know what you're talking about. So I'll tell you one of the biggest mistakes I've made in hiring is not bringing Nick your one. I felt like it was too easy, you know, and I thought I need to get out of my comfort zone. And yet what I learned quickly was, I'm not actually going to be able to hire people. They're going to fight for Vanderpilt because it's easy to change logos. I need to hire people

they're going to fight for Clark Lee, you know, and I mean, not in the egotistical sense, but in a sense of like, we're going to be in this bunker together and this can be really hard. Well, Zensk, as I call him affectionately, he is a bunker guy. All those personalities, there's a poem called Ulysses and Tennyson wrote it. And it starts. I am a part of all that I've met. Though much is taken, much abides. I am a part of all that I have met. Right. Though much is taking,

“I've lost a lot, much abides, much lives on. And I think this is true for all of us.”

The things we've encountered in life deliver us to the moment and also create the lens through which we see the world. And in that way, I think we have to stop trying to determine whether these things are good or bad and just accept them for as they are, but also appreciate them for how they delivered us. So all these personalities that you speak of, I mean, they're good and bad. They're elements of, we share joy, we share pain. I saw great aspects of leadership and I saw

things that I didn't relate to as much. And all of that grew within me a vision for what I wanted

to do for myself. There is no world where I don't know how to do this without talking to a third

person, but I don't mean to be like a guy that talks in a third, but like if Clark Lee is trying to be someone else, that's going to be painful for everyone. This contract negotiation, this became so clear to me that if I allow the world to dictate what I do, I will take the form of the world. And if I am to have any impact in this world, it's going to be because I have a spiritual center that I'm operating at. Meaning I'm not paying attention to these external things, but I'm stepping

“into these internal things. That's how we shape the world. Otherwise, we become shaped like the”

world, does that make sense? I'm saying. And I also think, and this is a leadership thing, and so we talk a lot about legacy and all these kinds of things. And it's like, I struggle with this because what I know is, like, we will return to the dirt. And we're only a few generations away from really honestly being forgotten. And even though my eight-year-old thinks that like, he said to me that day, like, I mean, if you guys are parents, you know, like an eight-year-old's

going to ask you about death and all those things. And that's given way to some beautiful conversations about pain and joy and this idea that our pain is joy and disguise. What we've enjoyed, we mourn when we lose. You know, so all these great things we've experienced become the source of this emotional pain that we feel when they're gone. And so you can live in this tension of, like, because I've loved, I heard, but I don't want to ever lose that tension. Does that make sense?

I'm saying. Okay, so my eight-year-old thinks that when we die and go to heaven, our family will

like, he's got this whole life ahead of him. He may not want to be eight, you know, shoot. And I may not be 44. I can tell you, I'd rather be 34 than 44, but that's another story. And so I've kind of let go of this thought of, like, oh, man, you know, like, I'm gonna leave this behind. I'm gonna,

“I'm gonna create this and it's gonna be celebrated for a long time. I think so much of that is”

our ego's wanting to hold on to impact. And instead it's like, you know what, honestly, like, what I want to do is enjoy the challenges that are in front of me, enjoy the people I'm around. I want to help other people navigate life successfully and create an environment where we can all appreciate one another. And rather than the big picture of a long term, I just kind of focus on that now. And it helps me, I guess, stay grounded, you know, stay present. And you didn't ask anything about that,

but I don't want to. But thanks for the opportunity to talk about it. Okay, we got five minutes. We got to go. There's one more here. I don't mean, I'm okay taking it if it's okay. Go ahead. Yeah, I was just curious, is you're building a standard of excellence in a program operating in an era of 17 to 22 year olds,

or baking millions of dollars. How do you balance code of conduct working with the player first?

That's too much for what we want to do. Yeah. And knowing there's real passion, like, you got to win games for the jobs gone. So once you've lived in a world where the job might not be there, I think you let go of this idea that I'm fighting for my job. I'm fighting for people I care about and my job becomes secondary. And it's not that I don't support my family. It's just like, if I live in that world, it's not going to be healthy for anybody. That's a starting point with

the whole NIL era. This is the challenge. This does is what keeps you up at night.

“If I want to make the program all about transaction, it can be. I think my model is so important.”

I think of the word modesty. These guys are being taught to not have any scaffolding for the future. My sum of them will go from making millions of college of millions of NFL and they'll go do what they want to do. But I say to them all the time, no one's inspired by 30 year-old talking about their glory days. It's a lot of life to live beyond your ball. It's not about having a backup plan. I want these guys to be competitive for the rest of their lives. That's the gift.

I mean, we all experience that. We have passion for what we're doing. We can't create an environment. If I leave it on its own, our locker room will become the world, which means

there will be a million dollar club, a $500,000, a $30,000 dollar club and a zero dollar club,

and we'll have partitions between them. That doesn't sound like a very good team. I just message that until I can't message a name or I try to put it. We have fun with it. I walk into a team meeting room. I've got a Nike Tech fit on. Do you guys know what Nike Tech fit is? Some of you are good. I walk into the team meeting room. I've got a Nike Tech fit on because I was cold. I put this jacket on. It was in my locker. Walk in. It's like, "Oh, coach, let me get

that out for the meeting." I'm like, "Oh, man, anytime that I'm doing something that's cool, it starts to feel cool. I walk changes a little bit." I was having a good day. Now, I'm having a great day. It struck me as this thing. They covet this jacket. I'm like, "All right,

so here's the deal." It's just like we always talk about what you drive doesn't

make a man. You're not defined by your NIL value. I don't care how many Twitter followers you have an asshole in a Nike Tech fit still an asshole. This has become the fun back and forth. We have just trying to constantly, again, we are a grounding place for them. I've got to stay committed

“to that or else. I do believe we'll lose our identity and this is, I think, the challenge of coaching”

and 2026. Awesome. This is so cool. Give it up for Coach Clark, please. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan @LearningLeter.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Clark. Lee, if you take away from my notes, different ball, same problems. Spend time with people in different fields who are solving similar problems.

In his case, a football coach and a baseball manager or the front office, they have more and common than you'd think. I think it's worth it for us to go find our version of the Milwaukee Brewers. Who is somebody? Who is at a similar level? Maybe a completely different industry, but they're trying to solve similar problems. Have conversations with them. That's something

Clark comes down to a few things. Teach with passion, develop people technically and genuinely

“care about them as humans. Teach with passion, develop people technically and genuinely care”

about them as people love it. Then growth as a leader requires going to the hard places. You can't

evolve the program without evolving yourself. First, you know, it was really cool about this.

“When after we finished recording, I walked Clark out, came back into the room with all of my”

members from my learning leader circle. So many of them, including ones who have never watched a football

game commented on just how introspective and thoughtful Clark was. He was like in it, really thinking things through as we were talking. You can feel how much he cares about getting better as a leader in order to serve others. It's really, really cool to experience that with other members of my learning leader circle. Once again, I want to say thank you so much for continuing to

“spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the”

learning leader show with Clark Lee. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue that and you also go to Spotify, Apple podcast, subscribe to the show, rate it, hopefully five stars in right, a thoughtful review by doing all of that you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis and for that. I will forever be grateful. Thank you so so much. Talk to you soon. Okay, wait.