Friday Features: Veteran UNA coach Bobby Wallace enjoys his time with young Lions
By Mike Perrin
Bobby Wallace hasn’t seen it all in his 27 years as a college football head coach, but he’s seen most of it.
Wallace, who turns 61 next week, is the winningest coach in Gulf South Conference history, with 133 victories, along with 76 losses and one tie in his 18 years in the league. After opening his 14th season at
North Alabama with a 34-17 win over Miles on Sunday, the Magnolia, Ark., native is three wins away from overtaking Hal Self No. 1 spot in wins for the Lions.
GSC followers know that Wallace is in his second stint as the head man in Florence, separated by eight seasons at Temple and five at West Alabama. They know his 1993, ’94 and ’95 Lions won NCAA Division II championships, the first scholarship school to win three straight.
And, if they know the former Mississippi State standout and member of the Division II, state of Alabama and University of North Alabama halls of fame they know he’s still on the sidelines because he loves his work.
“In the summertime when the coaches are on vacation, I wonder why am I doing this,” he said. “When we get back to work in July and August, I get around the coaches and the players and the enthusiasm comes right back. I guess that’s it.
“It’s not the money. My retirement would be about what I make. It’s fun to be around these young people. The coaches, they are young people to me, too. The oldest coach on my staff,
Cody Gross, played for me. It’s watching them grow and giving them the opportunity to be successful.”
Wallace certainly knows success and he doesn’t measure it just by wins and losses. He is 107-46-1 at UNA and 152-147-1 overall, having suffered through a 19-71 mark at Temple in what was likely the worst coaching situation in the Football Bowl Subdivision. He had two undefeated 14-0 seasons at UNA and one winless mark at Temple.
After one year out of the game following a 26-30 record in five seasons at West Alabama – where he led the Tigers to the NCAA playoffs for the first time since 1975 – the GSC and Division II Coach of the Quarter Century (1972-97) returned to Florence.
His “homecoming” wasn’t based on just any one reason. Wallace said, “One, the area. I’ve coached a lot of different places and the 10 years I was here was the longest I was ever in one spot. It was at an age when I made a lot of great friends. Now, they are bankers, city councilmen, mayors. This is kind of home for me. It’s like the town that I’ve grown up in, even though I didn’t.
“The second thing is I wanted to get back to recruiting the high school players,” he said. “We had the highest grade point average we’ve ever had for football last spring. Players are here four or five years and they are graduating. They will go on to ‘be UNA’ all their life, giving back to this university. You can’t develop what I consider to be the intangibles it takes to have a championship program with players you’re around for just four months.
“When we won those (national) championships, we had 19 seniors go to the White House. Seventeen were high school players who had won three championships. I believe you can do it with high school players."
“Those things we have accomplished,” Wallace said, “plus we’ve won two conference championships. We shared them, but we’ve got the rings.”
Earning conference championship rings is a lofty goal – even for a storied GSC program like North Alabama. Wallace recounted the difficult road his Lions traveled in 2014 to finish 6-1 in the league – 9-2 overall – and earn a share of the conference crown with Delta State.
“The Gulf South Conference is like the SEC West,” he said. “It’s a cliché, but almost anybody can beat you. We won three very close games last year – Florida Tech, Valdosta and West Georgia. We lost close ones to Delta State and Valdosta (in the playoffs). In that sense, teams are stronger. I don’t know if we have quite the quality of what the teams were back then, but it’s hard to say.”
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2015-16 GSC Friday Features
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