Penn State has a history of returning to familiar schools when hiring its head coaches, and its coaching search might involve a guy from the same school Penn State got its last coach from.
Rip Engle came to Penn State from Brown and brought a young Joe Paterno with him. Decades later, Bill O’Brien — a 1992 Brown graduate — succeeded Paterno as head coach.
Could Vanderbilt become another repeat source for Penn State’s next leader?
According to senior On3 college football analyst Chris Low, Penn State is expected to be among several programs interested in current Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea.
This season, Vanderbilt has climbed into the Top 10 and holds a 7–1 record, its best start since 1941.
Lea, who played fullback at Vanderbilt from 2002 to 2004, began his coaching career in Los Angeles as an assistant at Harvard-Westlake before earning a graduate assistant role at UCLA in 2006. After two seasons coaching linebackers at South Dakota State, he returned to UCLA in the same role, quickly developing a reputation as a rising defensive coach.
In 2012, Lea joined Dave Clawson’s staff at Bowling Green, working alongside current Texas A&M head coach Mike Elko. He then spent three seasons at Syracuse before reuniting with Clawson at Wake Forest. In 2018, he became Brian Kelly’s defensive coordinator at Notre Dame, where his units allowed just 18.6 points per game over three seasons and developed standouts such as Kyle Hamilton, Julian Love, and Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah.
Lea took over as Vanderbilt’s head coach in 2021 and currently holds a 23–34 overall record.
Penn State fans will recall that James Franklin also arrived in Happy Valley after three successful seasons at Vanderbilt, where he led the Commodores to consecutive nine-win campaigns in 2012 and 2013.
Vanderbilt athletic director Candice Storey Lee told On3, “We have the resources and commitment to make sure that we sustain excellence.”
