It was a bit of a homecoming for Clark Lea and Christian James when the Vanderbilt athletic department’s charter flight landed in Memphis.

Lea, the Commodores’ head football coach, and James, a graduate defensive lineman, both have deep ties to the city. Lea’s father is from Memphis, so he spent several childhood summers visiting his grandparents and watching Redbirds baseball games. James was born in Germantown and is a 2019 Christian Brothers High graduate.

Monday night, the pair was back in town for what was the third stop of Vanderbilt’s Commodore Caravans tour.

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The event, which took place at the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum, came just a week after stops in Atlanta and Chicago and a day before the group would head to Houston. It was part of an effort to interact and engage with Commodores fans, alumni and former athletes in different parts of the country.

“This is a great place for us to make a connection with our fan base and spread the word about what we’re doing at Vanderbilt,” Lea told The Daily Memphian. “It’s just always great to get out and be around people that are supporting what we’re building.”

About 100 attendees mingled while enjoying drinks and hors d’oeuvres before filing into a room to watch a live recording of the Commodore Hour radio show, on which Lea and athletic director Candice Lee made appearances. 

“We’ve had really good experiences here in Memphis,” Lee said. “And we know we have a great community (in the city), so we’re happy to be here.”

Vandy football’s presence in Memphis

James first made a connection to Vanderbilt as a high schooler through Chris Marve.

Marve is a Memphis native who was a defensive assistant on Vanderbilt’s staff during James’ recruitment. The 2008 White Station High graduate — who also played for the Commodores from 2008 to 2011 — bonded with James because of their shared hometown.

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But Marve departed for Mississippi State in 2019 and made a stop at Florida State from 2020 to 2021 before taking on his current role as Virginia Tech’s defensive coordinator in 2022. That’s left Vanderbilt with James as the lone player or coach in the program who hails from Memphis.

As Lea heads into his third year as head coach this fall, he hopes to re-establish that connection to the 901.

“We’ve had a number of guys over the course of our program’s history that have come from Memphis,” Lea said. “So it’s certainly a place that’s important to us.

“In fact, I came down in January during my time on the road just to make some (recruiting) stops at local high schools. Because Memphis has a lot of talent, and there are a lot of kids here that can have great success at Vanderbilt. We wanna make sure we’re getting in front of them.”

One way Vanderbilt can strengthen its presence in Memphis is to play regular non-conference football games against the University of Memphis. The programs are just a little more than 200 miles apart, but haven’t faced each other since October 1989, when the Tigers beat the Commodores 13-10 at the then-Liberty Bowl.

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Vanderbilt, which also lost to Cincinnati in the 2011 AutoZone Liberty Bowl, leads the all-time series with Memphis 7-5. The schools played almost annually in the late 1970s and ‘80s, meeting 10 times between 1978 and 1989.

Though Lee says she would be interested in reigniting the rivalry, she adds that the SEC’s schedule changes with the 2024 additions of Texas and Oklahoma to the conference make it tough to plan future non-conference schedules — especially with most non-conference games already scheduled several years in advance.

“Right now, we’re sort of in a holding pattern while we ascertain what our conference schedule will be moving forward,” Lee said. “So then we’ll be able to decide how we move forward.” 

For now, James — who has a friendship with Memphis offensive lineman Jacob Likes that goes back to their days as teammates at Christian Brothers — hopes for the possibility that his Commodores match up with the Tigers in the postseason. 

“It’d be fun to play Memphis in a bowl game, that way I can beat up on my buddy Jacob Likes,” James joked. “He may be a pretty good player, but not when he goes up against me.”

Vandy basketball’s renewed rivalry with Memphis

While it’s been over three decades since Vanderbilt and Memphis have competed on the football field, the schools’ basketball programs rekindled their feud last season. 

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The Commodores and Tigers met on the hardwood for the first time since 2005 in both teams’ 2022-23 season opener. Coach Penny Hardaway’s team picked up a 76-67 road victory in that Nov. 7 game.

Vanderbilt coach Jerry Stackhouse’s group will head to FedExForum in the 2023-24 season to complete the second part of the home-and-home series. 

Lee saw the value in last season’s game and hopes it’s one that the two sides can continue in the future. The Commodores also lead that all-time series against the Tigers with an 8-6 record.

“I just thought it was such an important matchup, of course with the intrigue of having two former NBA players who are now coaches,” Lee said. “It was really good.”

Hardaway and Stackhouse have also both openly talked about organizing a mid-season tournament featuring teams led by former NBA standouts. They said early last season that they’d recently reached out to Michigan coach Juwan Howard and now-former Georgetown coach Patrick Ewing. 

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“I recall a couple of years ago Coach Stackhouse first brought that up to me, with this idea that they wanted to create some kind of round-robin tournament where they would take turns hosting it,” Lee said. “So I think there’s a lot of interest there. There’s certainly a brotherhood and a camaraderie that I think they wanted to put on display.”

Hardaway said after his team’s game against Vanderbilt last season that the talks about creating the tournament had stalled. Lee isn’t sure why, but says she would support the idea if those discussions were to come back up.

So, it’s all of it — football recruiting, competition between the universities’ athletic programs and more — that helps connect Vanderbilt to the city of Memphis. 

And though some of those initiatives might take years to come to fruition because of logistical hurdles and other factors, Monday was a small step in the direction of what the Commodores’ athletic department hopes to achieve.

“Being in the state of Tennessee, I think it’s really important that we have a presence here in Memphis,” Lee said. “I certainly respect what the university is doing. 

“This city has been good to Vanderbilt.”