From Central Georgia to Cajun country, Bobby Lamb has a new gig
By Michael A. Lough
The Sports Report
centralgasports@gmail.com
Bobby Lamb and wife Allyson are in the early stages of some culture shock.
He’s from Georgia, she’s from South Carolina, and they’ve lived in those two states for decades.
Now, they’re in the middle of Cajun Country.
“I had never set foot in the state of Louisiana before,” Lamb said. “Heard a lot about it, never been here.”
He’s now in the middle of a mighty unique part of the state and country.
Lamb’s Facebook picture changed on March 29 to him in Louisiana-Lafayette attire, the former Mercer head football coach having taken a job at the Sun Belt program as volunteer assistant to the head coach.
The Lambs were able to move to Lafayette a few months ago, before COVID-19 led to stay-in-place and distancing guidelines.
Lamb is now working for an old quarterback of his.
Billy Napier was behind center at Furman from 1998-2002. The Paladins won two Southern Conference titles with the two-time all-conference quarterback and lost to Montana in the 2001 FCS/1-AA national title game.
After an off-season of shaking up the coaching staff in preparing for a hotseat season in 2019, Lamb was fired on Nov. 24, a day after the Bears finished a 4-8 season with a 56-7 loss at North Carolina a day earlier.
Napier was in that first round of callers offering consolation.
Then the two talked again in early January while ULL was preparing for its later-than-usual Jan. 6 LendingTree bowl game against Miami of Ohio, a 27-17 Cajuns win.
Lamb said he was looking at assorted head coaching or offensive coordinator possibilities, but there wasn’t the right fit.
All of a sudden, there was a role created that Lamb felt comfortable with at a brand new locale run by somebody he was familiar with.
And just as intriguing, Lamb was breaking out of a major comfort zone.
“I’m kind of your abnormal college coach,” Lamb said. “I played at Furman, then was an assistant coach at Furman for 15 years and head coach for nine, then I went to Mercer.
“Nothing wrong with that, but basically, you’re a product of the coaches you coach for. I didn’t have a whole lot to go on, except for my experiences at Furman as an assistant under two head coaches.”
Lamb’s experiences were drastically limited compared to those of his new boss.
“He’s been an assistant at Clemson, an offensive coordinator, youngest offensive coordinator in the country,” Lamb said of Napier. “Then he went to Alabama as an analyst, then he came back to Alabama to coach receivers for six years. Then he finally got his own gig as offensive coordinator at Arizona State.
“So he’s been around a lot more coaches than I have.”
Lamb’s duties will become more defined once the nation’s circumstances change. He’s in quarterback meetings, and otherwise has mostly administrative duties, what with limitations on how many staffers – volunteer, grad student, or full time - can work on the field with teams. Lamb said he hopes to return to on-field coaching duties at some point, but “I’m a sponge right now.”
ULL has gone through some staff changes the past few months.
The Cajuns added Robby Discher as special teams coordinator and defensive assistant, Austin Armstrong as inside linebackers coach, while promoting Patrick Toney to defensive coordinator and replacing Rob Roberts, who went to Baylor.
Lamb will no doubt spend time with another former Peach State coach on staff. Offensive coordinator and line coach Rob Sale was Georgia’s offensive line coach in 2015.
Napier, though, is the play-caller. Lamb and Napier have never coached together, and college football has gone through loads of changes and fads since their days in Greenville.
Louisiana ranked behind only Navy, Air Force, Army, Kentucky, and Ohio State nationally in rush offense in 2019 at 257.4 yards a game, and was 62nd in passing with 236.7 yards for eighth in total offense.
Lamb said the Cajuns have 18 starters back, so expectations are high to at least come close matching the program’s first 11-win season of 2019.
The big hump left is one Lamb is mighty familiar with: Appalachian State.
The last two years, the Cajuns and Mountaineers have played four times, regular season and Sun Belt championship, and ULL is 0-4.
Lamb and Furman, as a player and coach, went against App State in their old Southern Conference days. Lamb said he probably had more success as a player against the Mountaineers than as a coach.
“As a head coach, it was probably minus,” he said. “I coached during the era of a guy named Armanti Edwards. But in the ‘90s, we did pretty well against them when I was an assistant coach.”
The lone players on the 2020 roster from Georgia are wideout Cassius Allen of Pelham, in Lafayette by way of Northeast Oklahoma A&M, linebacker Chauncey Manac from Clinch County by way of Garden City Community College, and tight end Johnny Lumpkin of Fredrick Douglass by way of Hutchinson CC.
Lamb will get a fix of Georgia twice each season when the Cajuns play Georgia State and Georgia Southern.
Louisiana, with about 44 percent of Georgia’s population, has plenty of Division I (FBS and FCS) program: LSU, Louisiana-Lafayette, Louisiana-Monroe, Louisiana Tech, Tulane, Northwestern State, Grambling State, Southern, McNeese State, Nicholls State, and Southeastern Louisiana. That’s four more than Georgia’s list (UGA, Georgia Tech, Georgia Southern, Georgia State, Kennesaw State, and Mercer).
Overall, with Divisions II and III and NAIA, Georgia has six more programs. Napier graduated from Murray County near Chattanooga, so he and Lamb hope to extend the recruiting reach into Georgia more.
Nevertheless, Lamb is in Lafayette, a city of about 121,000 people and hub of a five-parish metro area of about 490,000.
“I’ve been over here about two months, and the people are awesome,” he said. “They are really, really nice. And of course, the food is phenomenal, as everybody knows.
“I’m trying to stay away from that.”