NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- There's this thing in Derek Mason's office, glaring at you as you enter, poised to ruin your day. It's called a VersaClimber, but it more closely resembles a modern spin on a medieval torture device. At its core, it's a tilted 7-foot-10 double-wielded steel pole with hand grips and foot pedals. You're supposed to kick and pull and fight to scale the beast. Coaches call it The Microwave because "five minutes on it will kill you," Mason says. And every day, multiple times a day, the 45-year-old father of two locks himself in and sets his body to broil.
After two knee surgeries -- "There's no meniscus left," he said -- he swears by its non-weight-bearing properties, pointing out that it's the perfect complement to his daily bike ride. He loves the burn, having grown attached to it while defensive coordinator at Stanford. During his first year as Vanderbilt's head coach, he had to do without it, though -- until three weeks ago when it arrived in Nashville and was installed inches from his desk. An interior decorator would faint over its prominent placement, but it's there in the middle of the action by no accident.
"It's a full-body workout," Mason said. "You're climbing and driving. The tension goes up, the tension goes down."
By engaging in that tension, he's found relief. By getting more involved in the day-to-day, by taking more on his plate on the field and pushing himself even further off of it, Mason has rediscovered himself.
The second-year head coach understands now that he's not the CEO type. He kicks and pulls and fights the beast of college football. He fired both of his coordinators, an assistant coach and his strength coach in one offseason. Many of them were close friends, but he couldn't stomach the disconnect. He saw a too-vanilla offense and a defense that was trying to do too much. "If I'm responsible for it being that way, I'm responsible for fixing it," he said. So he hired Andy Ludwig from Wisconsin to be his offensive coordinator, entrusted the weight room to former Nebraska strength coach James Dobson and appointed himself defensive coordinator.
It was the ultimate power move for a coach coming off a rookie year in which he went 3-9. Brazen when viewed from the outside, gutsy when viewed from within, Mason went all in on his vision of Vanderbilt football.
"Until you have a true pulse of what your team is and who your team is, you have to make sure that you hold on to every facet of it," he said. "I've always been a true believer that if I have to micromanage, I've hired the wrong guy. I've never had to do that. I've been with programs where each guy pulls his weight. But that's a trust factor that occurs over time. I really gave guys just a little too much and was a little too hands off. And now I'm hands on. There's nothing that happens in our program that I don't know about. And for good reason, because I'm responsible for it. It's got my name on it."
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It was an unreasonable situation to begin with. Mason was one of the last major coaching hires in college football after the 2014 regular season, introduced just two weeks after the BCS national championship game in January. Most high-profile assistants had already found new jobs by the time he was assembling his staff. And in the midst of it all, his predecessor was poaching a large chunk of the program's recruiting class on his way out the door.
Mason bought into Vanderbilt high and got stuck with a paper tiger.
Credit is due James Franklin, of course, as he did the impossible, winning nine games in back-to-back seasons. But what he left behind when he moved on to Penn State wasn't exactly sustainable. Not only did the 2014 class take a hit when he left, one-third of the four-star recruits he signed from 2012 and 2013 are no longer listed on the roster. Even current assistant Charles Bankins, who was part of Franklin's original staff at Vanderbilt, admits that if Franklin had stayed they might have squeaked out one or two more wins.
The season started out a mess, with starting quarterback Patton Robinette succumbing to an injury in the first half of a 30-point home loss to Temple. In all, four QBs would take turns struggling under center as Vanderbilt barely squeaked by UMass on a missed field goal from close range and survived Georgia Southern by one point. The Commodores went winless in conference play, outscored 283-102.
"Whether James was here, Knute Rockne was here, Vince Lombardi was here, when you're playing 32 freshmen you're going to go through some struggles," Bankins said.
Falling from 9-4 to 3-9 was jarring for everyone. It challenged many on the staff to adapt, Bankins said. Some did. Others were fired.
"It takes a lot of guts, and a lot of people don't make that change. They're worried about outside perception," Bankins said. "[Mason is] worried about what's best for the program. ... So he made the changes, and I think if you ask any of the kids in our program, anyone around the building, you see that there's a different energy than we had last year."
Mason admitted that last year "came really fast." Baring all, he said he made "false comparisons" between Vanderbilt and Stanford and assumed that back-to-back nine-win seasons meant the team had leadership in the locker room and understood expectations. But it turned out he was wrong and the "buy-in part" took longer, he said.
"It was obvious that there were some adjustments that needed to be made in terms of personnel, the coaching staff, the strength staff. Once those were made and I made the decision to move forward and systematically get the guys that fit who we are and what we're doing, it really started to come together."
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It began with a 51-0 loss at Mississippi State.
No one expected Vanderbilt to beat the Bulldogs on the road, and the score wasn't all that surprising either. But Mason was fuming that night in Starkville. It was the most upset he'd been in his coaching career. It was Week 11, and players weren't getting aligned properly. They were lost.
"The kids were disheartened," Mason said. "I didn't see the fight."
So he showed them. Standing in front of the team during the bye week before the final game of the season, he told them, "Never again."
"We set Vanderbilt football back," he said. "All the things that had been gained in three to four years had been lost in one game. I set it back. We set it back. So now what we need to do is turn the clock forward and make sure that never happens again."
That was the week everything changed for Mason. The future personnel changes were solidified in his mind. He took over the defense immediately. Practice was altered. He rolled up his sleeves and stopped trying to play CEO.
Vanderbilt fell to Tennessee 24-17, but there were signs of progress. The Commodores had followed up the biggest loss in league play with the closest defeat.
"Even though it was a loss, we fought really hard, and that same fight is something I've noticed in spring ball," said veteran QB Patton Robinette. "Guys have not accepted losing. No one wants to go through that again. The work level has been tremendous."
And that starts at the top, where Mason has poured himself into the defense, walking the tightrope of handling head-coaching duties away from the field while dedicating time to practice and the film room. Working the schedule is difficult, but he says he's having the time of his life.
It's been good for him and the team, said director of football operations Jason Grooms, who has known Mason for a decade and occupies an office directly next door to Mason and his coveted VersaClimber.
"You can see a different spark," Grooms said. "He's enjoying ball."
He later added: "It's a new energy right now. If you can bottle it up and open it up in September, we'll be ready to go."
It's going to be a long climb back above .500, but unlike last year, Mason is holding the long view and taking nothing for granted.
"If we can continually get better and play really good football -- which I think we can and I'm confident it will -- that's going to play itself out," he said. "I don't need to make predictions. I'll leave that to the prognosticators.
"Some say we have the toughest job in college football. But you know what? I like it tough. It's never been easy."