Clark Lea thought Vanderbilt had no shot at Jared Curtis — but the 5-Star 'misfit' chose to flip the script
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What if I told you that Vanderbilt quarterback Jared Curtis took a different route in deciding where he wanted to play college football , with a school that put zero resources into recruiting him until one phone call changed the future for Clark Lea?
And what would you think, as schools roll out the red carpet and do anything necessary to land a coveted prospect, if it was actually the player who recruited the school?
A nonconventional recruitment, like the one that took place with Jared Curtis, is rare in this era of college athletics, especially when money is such a driving force in schools staking their claim to industry rankings.
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Whether it's private jet hours, parents securing houses, exotic cars or even schools offering real estate offerings to a recruit in the hopes of a signature, we entered uncharted waters over five years ago with the inception of NIL.
But in the rare instance of the highly-touted quarterback's recruitment, money was the last thing discussed during a recruitment process that left those on West End, and college football, a bit stunned at how this all came together.
It's one thing to just throw out an offer to a highly touted prospect to get your school's name on the list. It's another thing to actually find out that this potential five-star quarterback is sincerely interested in your school
In fact, Lea was not going to waste his staff's time in pursuing a kid he knew there was no shot in landing.
The reality for Vanderbilt was that in the grand scheme of things, even with all of the momentum created over the previous two years, Curtis was the prize recruit that seemed so far off their radar that inviting him out to practice was most likely the closest they'd get to having him around campus.
"We really didn’t recruit Jared. Not that we wouldn’t have recruited him, but part of being effective is elimination. You don't wanna chase things that aren’t gonna happen," Lea mentioned earlier this summer to OutKick about Jared. "He came to a Tuesday practice the week we were playing Tennessee in 2024.
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"That was really kind of it in terms of seeing him and interacting, and even on that day I don't know that I spent that much time with them, outside of sitting in the team meeting."
All of this came during a time in which Curtis de-committed from Georgia, was lured to Oregon for a short time period, then re-committed to Georgia.
All the while, Vanderbilt was still on the outside, not even thinking they had shot to get on his radar outside of a random appearance at practice like any other recruit.
Head coach Clark Lea, Tre Richardson No. 6 and Gabe Fields No. 33 of the Vanderbilt Commodores celebrate after beating the Kentucky Wildcats at FirstBank Stadium on Nov. 22, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (Getty Images)
There might have been a visit to practice, but it wasn’t as if Vanderbilt was under the impression that the five-star quarterback who was garnering headlines due to his talent and subsequent recruiting process with Oregon and Georgia.
But, what Vanderbilt would soon find out was that Curtis was not actually fully invested in leaving his city behind to play at Georgia.
"I think the starting point really was about Jared being unsettled and trying to find a place he really felt great about I think he loved Oregon and loved Georgia. But, he was unsettled. We didn’t put much time and attention to it, we just focused on growing our program
"He was paying attention, then kind of organically reached out and said 'I'd like to come and spend some time at practice," Lea recalled.
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What turned into Jared showing up for a practice during Vanderbilt's bye week after losing to Alabama in 2025 blossomed into something the Commodores coaching staff did not see coming.
It was actually Diego Pavia going to watch a friend of the family play high school football on a Friday night that had Vanderbilt coaches starting to change their tune, just a bit.
Following that game, which had Pavia marveling at the talent of Curtis, a late-night phone call to his offensive coordinator Tim Beck put the wheels in motion for a story nobody in the high school football world thought was possible, especially those around the Georgia campus.
"Diego goes to one of his games on a Friday night," Tim Beck recalled. "Diego calls me that night, and he says, 'Hey, man, you got to see this kid'. I go, 'Yeah, we know about him, we know about him, Diego'. He (Diego) didn't think we knew about him. It's like, 'yeah Diego, we know about him, but he's not interested in us, he's committed to Georgia'. And he goes, "Well, I talked to him. I think he's interested'."
As for that next morning, after the late-night call from a stunned Pavia, Beck would come to find out that not only was Jared Curtis interested in the Commodores, he made it a priority to pay attention to what Vanderbilt was doing on the field.
"He really didn't have a favorite team that he was. He really didn't have a favorite player that he watched," Beck told OutKick. "And so, I called Jared the next morning, on a Saturday morning, and I talked to him a little bit, and one of the first things i said is, 'Hey, I know you, you haven't been really been watching much ball, but I was just curious'.
"And before I got through my sentence, he stopped me and said, 'Coach, I got to be honest with you, the only team I've watched this year has been Vanderbilt'."
Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea reacts after an overtime victory against Auburn at FirstBank Stadium in…
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