One Coach With Area Ties Loses A Job, Another Might

It’s that time of the year when college and high school football coaches begin changing jobs---whether they want to or not.

One move this week and talk of another one potentially happening hit close to home.

On the college level, former Clemson coach Tommy West has been ousted in his ninth season at Memphis. His record was a few games below .500 but, probably more importantly, the moribund Memphis program draws flies (about 4,000 for a recent Thursday night game) in the massive Liberty Bowl Stadium and as a C-USA school stuck in the middle of SEC country the Tigers just aren’t making any impact.

Among the murmurs I hear regarding college coaches closer to home is that it’s becoming more apparent that Furman’s Bobby Lamb may need to win his final two games (at Georgia Southern this weekend and against Wofford next Saturday) in order to hold on to the position he’s held since 2002 at the place where he once starred at quarterback.

The Paladins’ promising start was dashed by a porous defense and losses at the Citadel and of the lopsided variety at home against Appalachian State certainly didn’t help his cause as the program is on the verge of missing the FCS playoffs for a third straight season.

If Lamb is dismissed the Paladins will be in the very odd position of perhaps ending a coaching legacy that stretches back to the early ‘70s when Art Baker arrived at the school.

After Baker, Dick Sheridan was promoted from assistant to head coach. He’d been with Baker on the high school level in the midlands before coming to the upstate and he continued what Baker had built.

After Sheridan took the Paladins within two points of a national title in 1985 (with Lamb at QB) he moved on to N.C. State and Jimmy Satterfield was promoted to replace him, taking the school to the national title in 1988.

The success tapered off in the early ‘90s and when Satterfield was dismissed in 1993 the obvious choice was to bring back former assistant Bobby Johnson, who had a one-year hiatus from the staff as Clemson’s defensive coordinator.

When Johnson made like Sheridan and nearly won a national title he was hired away by Vanderbilt and Lamb, a longtime assistant after his playing career, was promoted.

During his tenure, he’s come within mere points of taking the Paladins back to the national title game but a gut-wrenching loss at Appalachian in 2005 is as close as he’s gotten.

Now, it may take two wins just to finish over .500 to give him a chance to try to get his alma mater back to that level.