Clark Lea trolls Brian Kelly's dancing, opens up about time together at Notre Dame

Vanderbilt coach Clark Lea worked with Brian Kelly at Notre Dame. The two built a close relationship, and that will take on a new level now that Kelly’s the head coach at LSU.

During SEC Media Days on Tuesday, Lea was asked about their time together in South Bend. Before he answered, he didn’t miss a beat before taking part in the running joke about Kelly’s Tik Tok endeavors over the offseason.

“He’s a great dancer,” Lea joked.

On a more serious note, Lea said he’s grateful for Kelly’s decision to hire him as the Fighting Irish’s defensive coordinator in 2018 after a year as the linebackers coach. He parlayed that into the Vanderbilt job in 2021, and he said his time with Kelly helped mold him into the head coach he is today.

“Coach Kelly, I would count him as one of my greatest mentors,” Lea said. “He took a chance on me as an unproven commodity. I was a linebackers coach who had never coordinated, and he gave me the opportunity of a lifetime. It wasn’t just that he gave me the job and said, ‘Hey, you go do it. Let’s see if you’re successful,’ but he invested in me every day. I learned a lot from that experience and the development of that relationship, but beyond that, I think I reflect back on my time with him more in this role than I ever did when I was sitting with him learning from his methodology. Coach Kelly’s smart in design.

“He cares about the little things, he wants attention to detail in the program, he’s accountability-based, he cares about people, he’s a big proponent of the weight room and building out your team physically and mentally. All those aspects we’ve carried forward as part of our program, too. There’s no mystery in his success. He has done it over and over again. It’s been fun for me to reunite with him in this conference and I count him as a dear friend and a mentor and I’m excited for him at LSU.”