Clark Lea made it through one sentence of his opening statement before choking up. He had just led Vanderbilt football to a 40-35 win over Alabama, the first win over an AP No. 1 ranked team in school history. Not only had the Commodores never beaten a No. 1 team, they'd never even beat a top-5 team on the field.

Vanderbilt football was named the Cheez-It National Team of the Week and Clark Lea named Dodd Trophy National Coach of the Week after beating Alabama.

For Kelly, who joined Lea in the SEC the following season in 2022 when he took the LSU job, it was a source of pride to watch Lea put Vandy on the college football map with that victory. Kelly joined “The Paul Finebaum Show” on Monday to talk about a lot of things, and one of the topics was certainly Lea and Vanderbilt.