Tre Lamb’s still a couple months from turning 35, and he’s entering just his fourth full season as a head coach.
Yet the Calhoun, Georgia, native and former record-setting Tennessee Tech quarterback brings a depth of experience that belies his youth and a wealth of knowledge from a lifetime in football in one of the South’s staunch football families. Tre’s father, Hal, is a revered former Georgia prep coach and his uncle, Bobby, is launching Anderson University’s NCAA Division II program. His cousin, Taylor Lamb, is quarterbacks coach at Virginia.
All of that, however, is backdrop to the experience Lamb brings into his first season at Football Championship Subdivision program and Southern Conference resident ETSU.
His first head coaching job, at Gardner-Webb, still lends lessons after taking over that program during the COVID pandemic.
“It’s night and day different,” says Lamb, already with two FCS Playoffs appearances in just three seasons. “I don’t get as stressed out about the little stuff as I used to. I was hired in 2020 in the middle of the (NCAA) Transfer Portal, COVID and NIL. I’ve only been a head coach in that type of environment and was just 30 years old when I got hired at Gardner-Webb.
“You control what you can control, every place is different, and you take the strengths and weaknesses and work together. I’m much more confident now [entering Year 1 at ETSU]. I just think the biggest improvement I’ve made as coach is being more focused on things that matter. I focus on winning football games and graduating student-athletes, and I have to keep that at the forefront.”
Building a more athletic, faster football team is Lamb’s ongoing quest for the Buccaneers, who are better off in the classroom and getting more financial commitments following prior ETSU head coach George Quarles’s truncated run.
ETSU expects to have approximately 110 players when camp opens in a few weeks, and Lamb already is seeing the necessary buy-in after having nearly 50 players in Johnson City for summer’s opening session.
The Bucs have 46 new players entering a 2024 season that opens Aug. 31 at Appalachian State and includes a daunting Week 3 visit from perennial FCS powerhouse North Dakota State, also under the first-year command of Tim Polasek.
Plenty young enough to relate to his players and also recognizing that social media can cocoon players, Lamb has designs on a variety of team-building initiatives that can expedite camaraderie.
“We paired some guys up from different position groups, had them eat lunch with certain guys and not just their friends or guys who play the same position,” says Lamb, noting 35 of his newcomers stem from January arrivals. “We’re going to do some cool things in camp to have some guys stand up and speak on different teammates, help them really get to know each other. It’s hard to get to know somebody in a short amount of time.
“We’re going to be particular about who guys are rooming with, spending time with, mixing groups together for tutoring sessions and things to make them really know one another before the seasons starts.”
David Blackburn owns time in college football around some of the game’s most prominent names in the past quarter-century – including Phillip Fulmer and Lane Kiffin, among others – and is a central figure to Lamb’s arrival atop ETSU football.
Blackburn, also the son of a legendary Tennessee high school football coach, sees a keen understanding in Lamb.
“From the time of his interview process and continuing through his first six months, Tre has consistently exhibited tremendous qualities of leadership,” Blackburn, a long-time athletics administrator and assistant to ETSU athletics, tells FootballScoop. “He has a clear vision of the success he desires for the football program.
“He and his staff have demonstrated a systematic methodology in relation to recruiting, teaching and leading in order to achieve that vision.”
Speaking of methodology, Lamb possesses a staff-assembly formula beyond reproach; his handful of years as a head coach already sees him with a coaching tree reaching the highest levels of college football.
His insights into the core construction no doubt are going to resonate throughout the sport.
“Somehow I’ve been fortunate enough to have attracted incredible coaching talent,” says Lamb, deflecting praise. “I don’t know how we got that talent necessarily at Gardner-Webb, because we didn’t pay great. But, I’m not a big interview guy. I don’t want you to sit up there and tell me what you know about football. How can you relate to staff? Everybody has a different role and perspective.
“I break it down into threes. I want three coaches who can keep it light, have great relationships with players and be somewhat of a jokester. I want three incredible teachers, and then I want three hard-asses who are going to be tough on kids and hold them accountable and not let anything slide.
“I think you have to have a good mix of strengths and weaknesses. If you just hire a bunch of guys like you or other coaches, you’re probably not going to have great coaches.”
Camp is mere weeks away. Lamb believes in his players, believes in his coaches. Believes this ETSU team is improved and positioned to bounce back.
“We’ve very athletic, we’re long,” Lamb says. “This is also my first public-school head job, and we can kind of go with a different recruiting model than the Gardner-Webbs, Furmans and Mercers, where grades and retaining players can always be difficult. We’ve got 15,000 students, the lifestyle our guys are able to live off the field is terrific. It’s almost like a small SEC school and that can be more appealing to defensive linemen, wide receivers, defensive backs. We’re going to put a premium on speed, which we’ve always done. We’re gonna be a fast, twitchy team. Just hang on for a couple years because we’re going to be extremely dangerous.”
And everyone along the way is being empowered to play a role; to fill a job between those hashmarks.
“As a head coach, everybody can do something for our team,” Lamb says. “You may not be the biggest or fastest, but I saw an article that said football is the greatest job in the world because there’s 88 jobs available. If we can get everybody on the same page and buy into those roles and not try to do too much, not think about my ego, but play your role and do the best I can in my role, we can get there.
“We’ve got a tough staff. We’re going to hit some bumps in the road early in this process, but if we stick together and don’t tear apart, I think we’ve got a chance for a solid year, and I think we’ll be in a lot of games.”