Inside UNC Charlotte -- April 2012 -- Football

Forty-niner football is coming soon to Charlotte
and head coach Brad Lambert has been working hard
to build his team, staff and stadium.
He's also been getting to know the community,
and to recruit a great fan base.
Let's check in with Coach Lambert and his staff
to see what it means to build a football program from scratch.
>>It's rising right out of the ground.
Charlotte 49ers football.
In 2013, the team will take the field.
Right now, the coaching staff led by head coach Brad Lambert,
is busy building its team and building its fan base.
The key among both efforts?
The steel and concrete that will be the Charlotte
49ers Football Stadium.
That steel and concrete will bring folks to campus.
Once on campus, it's easy for them
to fall in love with what they see.
>>It's a first class operation.
You know, when I took this job,
there was a great plan laid out and I've got to see that come
to fruition now and they’ll get that experience when
they come on campus.
When you pull off of Tryon Boulevard
you come on campus, this is an impressive part of campus,
and it's really, it's an eye opener for people to come on
and see all the new construction and all the growth
and expansion that's going on.
>>Right now, with the first season still a year away,
the new folks football attracts to campus are recruits
and their families.
Soon it will be 15,000 fans visiting campus,
many for the first time.
What they see will amaze them.
>>Well the first thing is, it's just a really beautiful place,
I think it's aesthetically appealing to people who come
here for the first time.
There's a lot of brick, there's a lot of stone-capped walls
and wrought iron fencing.
There's about 1,000 acres of property here
that we can utilize in the recruiting process.
It's a large place.
There's 7,000 to 10,000 students, I think,
that live right on campus and about 15,000 that live
about a mile away.
And one of the things that I think we had to overcome
when we first got here was the perception that
we're a commuter school, and that couldn't be farther
from the truth.
There's a very residential feel here.
And it was a big sales pitch for our guys.
I think young men want to go to school and have a good academic
and athletic experience, but we also want to have
a good social experience, and I think we can
do that here in Charlotte
>>While the stadium is going up, Lambert and his staff are
out in the communities, selling their program,
not only to prospective players, but also to perspective fans.
Lambert has been active in the community,
building relationships and winning fans.
>>We've been to a lot of different events
around the city of Charlotte and the surrounding area
and counties and it's been a great reception.
The excitement's really high.
People ask me a question, what's been the biggest
surprise for you?
That's probably the biggest surprise, been the
excitement around starting football.
Not only from our students and our alumni,
but the community of Charlotte and the different events
that we've had a chance to go be a part of and that's been
a lot of fun for me personally.
And I've encouraged everybody to come to campus because
a lot of people haven't been out to see this stadium
and the new construction that's going on on campus,
so I've encouraged people to come out and see it
and kind of get that reaction that we see out of a lot of people.
>>Lambert has assembled a strong staff that has been
to over 20 college bowl games and has over 85 years
of coaching experience to its credit.
The 49ers may be a start-up program, but the staff is anything but entry-level.
>>You know, when you think about formulating the staff,
you want good experience on your staff, you want people
that are very relational, that are going to relate
to each other well, that are gonna groom coaches
and players along.
So we've got a good mix, and the main thing for me
is just what kind of people they are, and how they're
gonna relate to the players, and how they're gonna lead
the players and make them better men and make them
better players as well.
>>You know, Coach always talks about the quality
of having relationships and first it starts with us as a group
and all the guys that we've hired, we've been tied together
in some way, shape, or form throughout our history,
and I think we've been very, very fortunate.
We've been able to hire a lot of Division I type
football coaches here and really that's been
Coach Lambert and my opinions best recruiting pitch is to be able
to bring those guys here.
But the good news is, prior to us ever getting together,
we knew each other.
We knew what we were getting into together.
We really wanted to be part of something together,
part of something special.
>>Together, this staff is building history.
>I told the recruits the whole time,
you know the power of being first is pretty strong
and I told them, don't underestimate that.
So you know it's been pretty cool for us as coaches
to be the first and to get a chance to build it
and do things that we don't normally get a chance to do;
design weight rooms, and you know, place TVs in offices,
and things like that, you know, you just don't have
that opportunity to do an in another situation.
And it doesn't come around, and it's really a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity for me and our coaching staff,
and that's kind of what attracted us here.
>>I joke all the time that the quarterbacks that
we're gonna coach are gonna set the all-time passing record
in game one and break it in game two,
and at the end of the year, have a pretty good little record book goin'.
So there's a lot of fun in that, there's a lot of excitement in that.
And one of the biggest reasons why we took this job is to be part of that.
>>The Charlotte 49ers football program has been
built from day one with a focus on quality.
The coaching staff that has been hired,
the first recruiting class that has received rave reviews,
the rising stadium that will be a crown jewel on the 49er's campus.
Lambert, of course, loves what he sees.
He loves the program's forward progress,
and he loves the thought of the upcoming fall,
when he and his staff finally get to do what they do best.
>>We're all chomping at the bit and this first class
that's comin' in is gonna get coached pretty hard I think.
>>August 20th can't get here soon enough when our guys
come to campus and we finally get to have a meeting with them,
and shown 'em how we want 'em to run on the field,
run off the field, and run from drill to drill,
and the way we expect to do things, and the way
we expect to go out and play.
And represent this University in a first class manner
with how we play and how hard we play.
That's why, you know, I want people to come early,
get a feel for what we're all about,
and then when you come to a game,
we wanna feel the team that everybody says,
when we leave that stadium, and they're like, we wanna
go back and watch those guys play, they played
extremely hard and they're a lot of fun to watch, and that's,
that's really what we're looking for.