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Vanderbilt baseball coach Tim Corbin has a longstanding friendship with football coach Clark Lea dating back to when they arrived on campus together in 2002 – Corbin as a head coach and Lea as a walk-on fullback on the football team. Since Lea made his full-circle return to Vandy taking over the football program in 2021, Corbin has been a valuable resource to the first-time head coach in everything from recruiting strategy, to establishing culture and discipline, and even serving as an additional mentor to players such as Diego Pavia.
Now perhaps Corbin might be learning something from Lea as well. One of Lea’s first hires as a head coach was his good friend Barton Simmons as the General Manager of the football program, whose role involved personnel and roster construction. With Simmons as GM, the Commodores went from 2-10 and winless in the conference in Lea’s first season to a program record 10-3 in his fifth season with the Commodores.
As Vandy baseball is wrapping up what looks to be Corbin’s worst season in 20 years, you may have missed a job opening that just opened at Vanderbilt – Director of Player Strategy and Personnel, Baseball. Here is the official listed job description for those interested:
In other words, tell me you’re looking for a General Manager without telling me you’re looking for a General Manager. Ignore the fancy jargon. Regardless of what they’re calling it, it’s clear what the job is.
This was not a major headline, and it easily could have been missed, but the significance of this shouldn’t be ignored. I have no idea how much influence, if any, Lea actually had in Corbin looking to add a GM. It has clearly helped the football program navigate the new NIL landscape, and I would imagine that correlation didn’t go unnoticed by Corbin. College sports is a completely different landscape now than when the VandyBoys dominated, a reality Corbin has been slow to embrace. Lea, to his credit, made an effort to get ahead of this early.
The first step to overcoming a problem – whether in recovery, sports, or life in general – is to first admit there is a problem. The near certainty of missing the NCAA tournament seems to have served as a massive slap in the face to a coach who has almost obsessively strived to maintain control over all things Vandy baseball. If Corbin has a weakness, it has been his reluctance to adapt as the game has evolved. He would rather chew glass than relinquish an inch of control of the program, and his willingness to cede some of the responsibilities to a new GM deserves praise. The VandyBoys need desperately a fresh set of eyes — someone who can help identify talent in the portal to supplement the roster and someone who can help modernize the program. It’s been a tough season, but for Corbin to take such a drastic step seems to indicate he recognizes the decline in the program and the status quo isn’t good enough. I’m sure there will be other changes as we head into the offseason, probably sooner than we wanted, but this appears to be a significant step in the right direction.
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