In an industry that's always wanting to find new coaching talent, Lamb is positioned for a quick rise by following an unlikely path.
In the euphoria of Tulsa’s upset win at Oklahoma State last Friday night, first-year coach Tre Lamb made a notable, old-school reference for someone in the millennial age group.
“Tulsa football’s back!” the 36-year-old Lamb said in an on-field interview with ESPN. “We’re not gonna be on the third page of the paper anymore!”
Even at the Tulsa World, the city’s only daily newspaper, it can be difficult to find space for a small, private school in a state dominated by Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. And when Lamb took the job last year, that sense of fighting to earn column inches in the local paper made perfect sense to a coach who had spent his entire career at the FCS level in situations where most people weren’t paying attention.
“They told me when I got here, the good news is you’re on the third page of the paper every week. The bad news is you’re on the third page of the paper every week,” Lamb told Yahoo Sports on Sunday night.
“You’re the third show in town. It’s always going to be Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Tulsa. And we really don’t have any other [college] teams in the state. And we’ve always felt like we had that chip on our shoulders and I feel like the coaches that came here before me, Todd Graham and Steve Kragthorpe and the guys have had success, have kind of worn that as a badge of honor. Like, you know, we’re the little brother. We’ve got to play like that. We’ve got to punch up.”
In his first attempt at punching up, Lamb delivered a knockout of a 19-12 victory, marking Tulsa’s first win in Stillwater since 1951. It was even more of a dominant performance than the numbers showed, with Tulsa settling for four field goals early in the game after long drives.
“I’m watching the game and sitting there saying, ‘Man, we should be up by two scores at least,’” Lamb said. “If we punch the ball in one or two more times, that’s not even a game. But we’re still young and still learning. We’ll get there, but that’s a big win for us.”
Among the 540 congratulatory text messages waiting for Lamb after the game, he said, were notes from several other coaches in the American Conference, commissioner Tim Pernetti and “all the Georgia guys” including Mark Richt and Kirby Smart, relationships built through two generations of Lambs coaching high school teams to state titles. His grandfather, Ray Lamb, was also Georgia’s longtime coordinator of high school relations and is in the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame.
Though Lamb may have been somewhat of a known commodity in Georgia and bordering states thanks to his family history, he was a complete unknown on the national level when Tulsa hired him last year after one season at East Tennessee State and two conference titles at Gardner-Webb before that.
If anything, the most notable item on Lamb’s résumé was that he could claim the title of college football’s best golfer. He's nearly a scratch handicap, once shot 74 at Augusta National and said he will play between 50 to 100 rounds a year — though the clubs have been put away since last July when he qualified for the Oklahoma State Amateur.
“That’s my only hobby,” Lamb said. “I don’t fish, don’t hunt. It’s a great way to raise money. You go play golf with donors and former players, and they’re impressed by your ability to play and want to play with you. It’s really opened some doors for me. I’ve raised more money on the golf course than in the office, I promise you that.”
With money of course being the center of everything in college football these days, it’s interesting that an emerging young coach like Lamb would choose to make a career-defining bet on himself at Tulsa of all places.
Though there was some history of success under Kragthorpe and Graham a couple decades ago, Tulsa is the smallest FBS school with fewer than 4,000 undergraduates. That presents significant challenges, particularly in this era where schools are scrapping for new revenue sources and donors to fund rosters.
Lamb explained to Yahoo Sports that he took the job at Tulsa after interviews with New Mexico and Charlotte mostly because of athletics director Justin Moore, who came from Texas A&M with a fundraising focus and made it his priority to tap into the wider city of Tulsa where oil and gas is a prominent industry. That has given Lamb some resources to improve the roster right away.
“It could be career suicide if you don’t have the right things in place,” Lamb said.
At the same time, Lamb said Tulsa is not on a level playing field with the likes of Memphis, Tulane or South Florida. And that’s OK, too, because it’s probably why Lamb was able to make the leap to the American without ever working at an FBS-level program even as an assistant.
Compared to Gardner-Webb, where Lamb managed to go 10-1 over two seasons in the Big South Conference at a school that hadn’t won anything in years, Tulsa seemed like the big time.
“We’re going to have to do more with less,” Lamb said. “That’s essentially what [Moore] told me in the interview, but he liked that I had been a head coach and coming from lower levels I wasn’t going to complain or make excuses for everything you don’t have.
“This is the best job I’ve ever had, so we’re going to treat it that way every day.”
Of course, coaching careers can often turn on random events. One of those occurred last summer when officials at the American asked if Lamb would be willing to play the Oklahoma State game on a Friday night and offered the incentive of one extra TV game if they could accommodate the request.
“I mean, we’re in Year 1,” Lamb said, even though he was wary of playing on a short week while Oklahoma State was coming off an open date. “We need as much exposure as we can get.”
The result of that decision wasn’t merely Tulsa getting a big win. With only one other game on Friday night, it produced a moment that nearly everyone in college football saw and paid attention to.
In other words, there will probably be suitors now for even bigger jobs because there simply aren’t many young coaches in college football who not only call plays but have half a decade of head coaching experience and have already beaten a Big 12 team.
“A lot of people don’t get the luxury to coach at a Gardner-Webb where you can make mistakes and it’s not on a national stage,” Lamb said. “A lot of guys get their first head job and it’s Virginia Tech or Georgia Tech and you can’t make mistakes or you’re toast. I made a lot of mistakes my first two years, but they weren’t exposed like some of these other head coaches. I was able to take my lumps and callous myself.”
There may be a few more callouses to come. Tulsa is still a difficult job, and the impact of the Oklahoma State win could fade if they don’t back it up with good performances against Tulane and Memphis the next two weeks.
But in an industry that always wants to find new coaching talent, Lamb is positioned for a quick rise by following an unlikely path.
“I’ve been watching Friday night ESPN games my whole life, and then suddenly you’re coaching in one at 36 years old,” Lamb said. “It was surreal, and it was a great feeling to get that done on a national stage.”
Category: General Sports
