ATLANTA – The Vanderbilt Commodores will enter their 2022 football season having lost 21 consecutive Southeastern Conference games.
Vanderbilt’s first three league opponents this year are Alabama, Ole Miss and Georgia, a trio that went 37-6 last season and respectively earned trips to the Cotton, Sugar and Orange bowls. Alabama and Georgia played last season for both the SEC championship and the national title.
“We don’t talk about that, and we don’t spend time on it. That’s just not who we are,” Commodores second-year coach Clark Lea said Tuesday as SEC media days continued. “We’re not fighting to win an SEC game. We’re fighting to become a dominant force within the conference. Obviously winning in the SEC requires winning that first game, but when that happens, it’s not going to be a huge celebration. We’re going to shift focus quickly to the next opponent, because that’s what winning programs do.
“I don’t take ownership of anything that happened before, but I certainly take ownership of last season. We fell way short of our expectations.”
The Commodores last prevailed within the conference on Oct. 19, 2019, when Derek Mason’s next-to-last team topped Missouri 21-14 in Nashville. Vanderbilt then dropped its final four league games of 2019, went 0-9 in the COVID-shortened season of 2020 and lost all eight league contests of last year’s 2-10 finish.