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This is an opinion column.

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The transformation now taking place at Vanderbilt traces the roots of Southern football back to 1899.

Vanderbilt’s biggest rival at the time was Sewanee, and Sewanee had an extremely ambitious and semi-crazy football manager named Luke Lea. All is lost now, but Sewanee’s Luke Lea was the true godfather of the Southeastern Conference. When it came to Southern football, the man was either a genius or a madman.

Sound vaguely familiar?

All these years later, Luke Lea has a godson who is also a hell-raising revolutionary in Tennessee football.

Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea, first revealed in this article, is a descendant of Sewanee’s Luke Lea, the mastermind behind Sewanee’s legendary 12-0 season in 1899. After researching the 1899 Sewanee, I had my doubts about Leas. football team and then Clark Lea confirmed the family connection for me during a brief conversation at SEC Media Days in 2023.

Vanderbilt plays at Auburn on Saturday, and the 11:45 a.m. kickoff will feel like old times in the SEC, thanks to Lea of ​​Southern college football. Vanderbilt is back and good at football once again. It’s been a while.

With a win against the Tigers, the Commodores will sweep the state of Alabama in football for the first time since 1955. Despite a victory over Alabama earlier this season, Vanderbilt is still trailing by 6.5 points heading into the game.

When I wrote at the beginning of this season Vanderbilt may returnI got a lot of reactions from people wondering when Vandy was okay. There was a time when Vanderbilt was the best football team in the Deep South, and one of the reasons for Vandy’s rise was the increasing arms race with rival Sewanee.

The renaissance of Clark Lea’s Vanderbilt bears some groundbreaking similarities to the architecture that built Luke Lea’s train-tough Sewanee football team in 1899. Clark Lea is using the combination of the NIL and the transfer portal to reshape the way we view Vanderbilt football and football. The new reality of Southeastern Conference football. Luke Lea, the progenitor of Southern football, used every device at his disposal at the time to build one of the South’s first legendary college football teams.

Good guy: Nick Saban ain’t driving through that Commodore

Clark Lea represents the future of football in the SEC. In 1899, Luke Lea was at the forefront of today’s college football. At the turn of the 20th century, college football was more like a club sport. Still, it was highly competitive and the passion for the game was there from the beginning.

Then Luke Lea came along and changed the game.

Administrators at the time were more like today’s athletic directors. Luke Lea did everything behind the scenes for Sewanee football, including preparing the schedule, raising money, recruiting players, organizing travel and writing stories for the student newspaper.

Heading into the 1899 season, Luke Lea predicted the course of Southern college football before anyone else. Even back then, it was all about money. Standing out from the competition, Lea put together an unprecedented program for Sewanee. It featured 12 games, which was unheard of in those days but is now standard, but there was something truly insane about the fall lineup. It involved a 10-day, 2,500-mile train journey across the South where Sewanee would play five road games over six days.

They filled barrels with mountain spring water for the trip, and Luke Lea hired physical therapy instructors for the trip. 18 players walked across the south, played matches during the day and slept on the train at night. And here’s the legendary part of all this. Not only did Sewanee win all of those games, but the Cumberland Plateau’s Tigers outscored all of their opponents.

Almost impossible to believe but true, Sewanee outscored Texas, Texas A&M, Tulane, LSU and Ole Miss by a combined score of 91-0.

And it all happened over the course of six grueling days.

Sewanee’s Luke Lea had some world-changing ideas when it came to college football. Vanderbilt’s Clark Lea once stood at the podium at SEC Media Days and announced to the world that Vanderbilt would be the best football program in the country.

After what we’ve seen this season, I’m starting to believe him.

Vanderbilt (5-3, 2-2 SEC) started the season with a 34-27 overtime defeat at Virginia Tech. Then came the massive destruction of everything we thought we knew about the SEC. Vanderbilt 40, Alabama 35, the kind of final score that could have long-lasting implications across the league.

In this new era of college football, can Clark Lea turn Vanderbilt back into an SEC powerhouse? Doubt it at your own risk. Vanderbilt nearly lost against No. 5 Texas last week and lost 27-24 to the good Longhorns. For the record, Vanderbilt’s all-time record against Texas currently stands at 8-4-1.

Vandy’s all-time record against Auburn? Those born after 1950 may be surprised. Auburn didn’t take the series lead until last year. The Tigers head into Saturday’s game with a 22-21-1 lead over Vanderbilt.

Auburn coach Hugh Freeze doesn’t see Vanderbilt’s success as a coincidence. Freeze praised Clark Lea earlier this week for being one of the best coaches in the country. Freeze, of course, knows a little more about Vandy’s new offense than most. This is pretty much the same system New Mexico State used against Auburn last season.

Even fearless point guard Diego Pavia is the same.

Clark Lea used the changing rules of the game to redesign his football team in a move that would make Luke Lea proud. In the offseason, Lea had the crazy idea to bring the core of the New Mexico State team to Nashville. Even former New Mexico State coach Jerry Kill is joining the journey.

“They’re good at being who they are,” Freeze said, “and they’re good at being who they are.”

It all starts with Pavia, a dual-threat quarterback who would probably fit in pretty well on the 1899 Iron Man Sewanee football team. Sewanee’s rapid run in Southern football needed a train. Presumably citizens of Pavia and the State of New Mexico flew to Tennessee.

Poetically speaking, the only team that could score a touchdown against a Sewanee team in 1899 was John Heisman’s Auburn Tigers. In a game that turned violent and eventually had to be canceled due to darkness, Sewanee defeated Auburn 11-10 at Riverside Park in Montgomery on November 30, 1899.

It would be unwise to dismiss Vanderbilt as a one-year wonder. Behind the scenes, Clark Lea and athletics director Candice Lee are already building for the future through Anchor Impact, the school’s NIL collective.

Just about everyone in the SEC has a soft spot for Vanderbilt these days, but the ghosts of Sewanee will hate to see Vanderbilt become a thriving football power once again. After all, it was the gate receipt dispute between Sewanee’s Luke Lea and Vanderbilt’s boys during the 1898 season that gave Lea the motivation to play 12 games in 1899.

After college, Luke Lea became a lawyer and U.S. Senator. And all the articles he wrote for the Sewanee newspaper helped, too.

Luke Lea was also the longtime publisher of the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.

I’m betting Luke Lea will be reluctantly pushing for this new age Vandy revolution. Football rivalries run deep in the South, but family is family.

MAILBAG

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Joseph Goodman is a leading sports columnist On behalf of Alabama Media Group and author of the book “We Want Bama: A Season of Hope and the Making of Nick Saban’s Ultimate Team.”