How Clark Lea changed end of Vanderbilt football spring practice after altercation on Thursday

Vanderbilt football coach Clark Lea ended Thursday's practice early because of an altercation between players. Instead of doing the final 15 minutes of drills, players were made to run to send a message about maintaining discipline.

"We had a really good day of practice going ... and just had a little bit of an altercation break out and I think at some point, and what I told the team afterwards is, we have to make choices and decisions that change us and that we're not willing to move forward as a program without changing and that we would rather leave people behind than continue to persist in the manner this program has persisted in," Lea said. "We have to be lit on fire to change."

Lea said the altercation was out of character for his team and that he did not believe any of the involved players had malicious intent but that the team needed to be sent a message about keeping emotions in check in difficult moments for when similarly heated moments come up during the fall season.

"This is a part of an ongoing message about our identity and who we are as a program," Lea said. "And being authentic and true to that and never being fake. And the behavior that I saw to finish practice, I felt like was fraudulent and it can't be allowed for and it's my job to say sometimes the football comes secondary and there's nothing that says that we have to practice two hours a day. There's nothing that says we have to get 15 practices in the spring. I would much rather know that I'm taking a disciplined team into the fall than to feel like we shortchanged our identity right now and turn and look the other way."

Lea said among the team's goals are to get to postseason play with a bowl game and to be a "player-run" program but that what happened Thursday was a moment he needed to step in.

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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Vanderbilt football: Clark Lea changes practice after altercation