Thoughts on ETSU Football Coach Tre Lamb at Southern Conference Media Days

My initial thoughts are he’s thinking of ETSU as a stepping stone (who doesn’t) but isn’t a real lover of the media.

Marky Billson

East Tennessee State football will be improved this season.

Because they can’t possibly be worse.

The question is how much they will improve. Only picked sixth at Southern Conference media days, an easy assumption is a 1–3 record against non-conference competition (Elon is nationally ranked in many FCS preseason polls) with victories in league play against the military schools and Wofford as they are picked beneath the Bucs.

That’s 4–7. Not satisfying, but an improvement from 3–8.

But new head coach Tre Lamb brings 20 players with him from FCS playoff participant Gardner-Webb. And while the Southern Conference has always looked down at the Big South, and against common opponents the Bulldogs didn’t fare much better than the Buccaneers did in dropping contests to Austin Peay and Mercer, there is the feeling adding 20 players from a playoff team and a year’s worth of their physical maturity is a recipe for a quick fix.

Lamb’s career record is 20–20, but 18–13 against the FCS.

So maybe the Bucs have been picked low. It’s going to be a lot to ask them to challenge the elite of the conference and FCS, let alone Appalachian State, following a 3–8 season, but with 45 players who have transferred from another school on the roster maybe there’s enough for a winning season to be a reasonable goal.

Much of the optimism stems from Lamb. Younger than any new ETSU head football coach since Roy Frazier, he not only brings new blood but a new attitude and philosophy to the Buccaneers.

Remember when Carl Torbush refused to consider transfers? He went 11–22 as a result.

Lamb is talking about transfers accounting for 50 percent of his future recruiting classes.

Refreshing.

During Southern Conference media days Lamb sat down with Dave Friedman for a 15-minute interview about the upcoming football season.

[embed]It’s nice the ETSU head football coach is no longer a country bumpkin

Here are my thoughts on the conversation:

1. I’m not as much of a fan of the “running quarterback” as Lamb is. I don’t think you can scramble your way to a title and often times scrambling quarterbacks leave something to be desired as passers- and Jaylen King’s stats at G-W kind of reflected that. Call me old school. I’m a Norm Van Brocklin fan. Let’s see someone scramble for 551 yards in a game.
2. Lamb talking about taking G-W as far as he could take it reminds me of when Johnny Majors told me he wanted to leave Iowa State after 1972 because he thought he had taken the Cyclones as far as he could (№15 ranking at one point- tie against Nebraska after his kicker missed a go-head extra point attempt in the final minute- etc.). Majors inherited a 1–10 team at Pitt in 1973 and won the national title in 1976. I don’t see Tony Dorsett on the ETSU roster, but this is cause for optimism. But it also says Lamb is looking at ETSU as a stepping stone.
3. When Lamb says George Quarles is a great coach, he’s playing the public relations game.
4. Earlier Lamb spoke to Clay Travis about ETSU being something of a farm system to larger schools. You get the feeling he feels Division II and FCS conferences perceived to play at a lower level than the SoCon will be ETSU’s farm system. He also speaks indirectly of why, despite athletic director Richard Sander calling the rule archaic, there still are no transfers allowed directly from one SoCon school to another without having to sit out a season. The SoCon membership is unique, split between public, private, and military schools. But nobody transfers to VMI. They do transfer to public schools with 90 percent acceptance rates.
5. When he spoke of how many scholarships ETSU had open and he could create some more all I could think of is what a dirty deal Tyler Riddell got. Sure, a new coach wanting his own players is nothing new in college football. But spare me, then, those lines from Sander about playing for loyalty to school when the school is not loyal to the player.
6. I wonder if during a postgame show Matt Wiljelm will now glowingly praise Lamb for building his team the right way, with transfers, regardless of the result. Because I remember after Torbush’s final game, a 10–3 loss to Chattanooga, where Wiljelm spoke of how Torbush built the Bucs the right way without transfers. The Bucs had just finished a 4–7 season.
7. Lamb is essentially writing off the Appalachian State and North Dakota State games. That’s fine. At least he’s not saying he’ll take the goalposts back to Johnson City naked if the Bucs win.
8. Speaking of the Bucs as a playoff contender might be pie-in-the-sky, but who in the local media will call him out for it if instead ETSU does finish with a modest record?
9. ETSU is always trying to tell us Johnson City is the greatest place in the world. Lamb speaks of it having a mall. Is this what makes Johnson City better than Bristol? “We don’t have a casino- we have a MALL!” ETSU figures never seem to speak of the inferiority complex Johnson City has to Knoxville when they’re overrating the town.
10. Preaching “together” will go farther for the Bucs than it did for Captain Benteen.

If you know, you know.

11. ETSU did not have 10,000 fans showing up at the end of last season. The final attendance count was 5,700 for the season finale with The Citadel. And ETSU tends to inflate their attendance count. In 2016 against Samford they reported a crowd of more than 6,000. I was there in the fourth quarter. I could literally count heads and did. There were only 600 people in the stands.

12. I like that he wants to throw. I think it will work well for the Bucs. I never could figure out how after three games last season ETSU had a 127–50 run/pass play ratio. Until I realized who it was calling the plays.

13. Greenback, the alma mater of 1996 stars Greg Ryan and Marcus Satterfield, is 100 miles from Johnson City. Derrell Bailey Jr. may be playing closer to Greenback then he once did, but saying he’s “come home” is dubious at best. And while I’m excited to see Bailey play based on Lamb’s description, why speak of Virginia Tech when Bailey last played for South Florida? And why is Montgomery, Alabama listed as Bailey’s hometown on the roster if he went to Greenback?

14. Saying the SoCon will be intact in the future but other leagues might not is a damning comment towards the Big South. But does it also suggest complacency at ETSU and not wanting to advance as Appalachian did?

15. Luke Smith playing center is intriguing. Quarles moved him all over the line and let him miss a practice a week. So if you’re wondering why so many quarterbacks got hurt at ETSU last year . . .

16. Friedman asked polite but still quality questions in this interview. So what’s with Lamb showing disgust at the end? After delivering telling answers for 15 minutes, and Friedman thanking Lamb for the interview, the new coach leaves with the most disingenuous “Yeah, thanks. ‘Preciate it” line imaginable. He can’t even look at Friedman when he says it. The final and lasting image of Lamb is the final two seconds where the new coach acts as if it was beneath him to talk to a respectful interviewer. When he was hired Lamb spoke of inviting alumni to practices. What about media? Look, much of the media in east Tennessee lacks teeth, so Lamb could probably treat the media like filth and get away with it. I hope he doesn’t. But if he does, and he is allowed to, and then he does go somewhere up the totem pole- THEY won’t tolerate it!

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