Former Vanderbilt Football Coach Sees His Stock Drop With Rough First Season
The Vanderbilt football program seems to be heading in the right direction with them qualifying for a bowl game under Clark Lea for the first time since he was named head coach ahead of the 2021 season.
With two more contests remaining, the Commodores have already won the most games in singular campaign under Lea, and with just one win, that will be the most games Vanderbilt has won since James Franklin was running this program from 2011-13.
In fact, that was really the last time the Commodores had a footprint on the national stage, playing a postseason game in all three years under Franklin while winning two of them. But after he took the head coaching job at Penn State, things crumbled a bit under Derek Mason.
Previously winning the Broyles Award in 2012 that's given to the top assistant coach in college football as the defensive coordinator of Stanford under David Shaw, Vanderbilt hired him to take over as head coach in 2014.
Mason could never figure things out in Nashville, getting fired during the 2020 campaign when the Commodores went 0-8 to start the COVID-shortened schedule. He left the program with a 27–55 record, having failed to secure a winning season or win either two of the bowl games they played in.
While it looks like Vanderbilt made the right decision to bring in Lea, their former head coach was looking to get his career back on track by accepting the top job at Middle Tennessee State after serving as the defensive coordinator for Auburn in 2021 and Oklahoma State in 2022.
Unfortunately, things haven't gone well for Mason in his new gig.
Morgan Moriarty of Bleacher Report has listed him as a first-year head coach whose stock has gone down at this stage in the season.
"Former Vanderbilt head coach Derek Mason has made a return to the state of Tennessee as the head coach of the Blue Raiders. MTSU is having a rough year, sitting at 3-7. The Blue Raiders defense is also ranked 116th in the country, allowing 34 points per game. It might take some time for Mason's defense—as well as the MTSU program overall—to improve."
Getting let go after one year doesn't seem to be in the cards.
Middle Tennessee State is a tough place to coach, and because past coaches have used that program as a stepping stone, it's been hard for them to sustain success.
The Blue Raiders, no matter how rough this season has gone so far, likely will ride things out with Mason and hope he can get things on track in the Conference USA that has year over year variance across the entire league.
