His first season as Vanderbilt’s coach (2014) had gone badly – 3-9 overall and 0-8 in the SEC bad. It was so bad that he fired both of his coordinators and put himself in charge of the defense. It was so bad that talk radio seriously wondered if Mason, the former Stanford defensive coordinator, would make it to a third season on West End.
Part of the reason was that former coach James Franklin had bolted to Penn State and took a bunch of Vanderbilt recruits with him. But part of the problem also was the growing pains of a first-year head coach.