ANDERSON, S.C. — Joshua Peacock had never heard of Anderson University.
The small, private Christian school located about 30 minutes southeast of Clemson, S.C., has an enrollment of just about 4,200 students.
So when Peacock, a 6-foot-2, 230-pound defensive end from Grovetown, Ga., learned that the university would be starting a Division II football program from scratch ahead of an inaugural season in 2024, he was intrigued.
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“I thought, ‘Yeah, that sounded great,’” he said recently. “But it did still give me some worry.”
Coach Bobby Lamb, who a decade ago restarted Mercer’s program after a 72-year hiatus, reached out to Peacock last spring via Twitter to see if he would be interested in attending Anderson’s first-ever football camp in July.
As a Division II prospect, Peacock was concerned that he might be left without a scholarship offer in a time when the transfer portal is putting a squeeze on high school recruiting. So he made the two-hour trip to South Carolina to get a good look at Anderson.
“What made me really secure in going was that (Lamb) had this plan, he had this vision,” Peacock. “Everything he wanted to do was getting done.”
In August, Peacock became the Trojans’ first commitment in program history. And on national signing day, he made it official, as Anderson signed its first 56 football players in school history.
After a good conversation with my family and coaching staff I have committed to @AUTrojansFB . Thank you @bobby_lamb @malikchevry @SethStrick11 for this excellent offer and opportunity. @RecruitGeorgia @Coach_M_Wash @CoachCFolger pic.twitter.com/j5rlEkZYIK
— Joshua T. Peacock (@JoshuaTPeacock1) August 30, 2022
The Trojans, who won’t play a game until 2024, will spend the 2023 season in a practice and developmental period ahead of their debut in the South Atlantic Conference. The incoming freshman class will essentially redshirt in the fall and have four years of eligibility starting in 2024.
“It’s been overwhelmingly rewarding already,” Lamb said. “It will be really rewarding once we play.”
Lamb’s wife, Allyson, was skeptical when he told her he was interested in the Anderson job. Actually, skeptical might not be the right word. “My wife thought I was crazy,” he said. “She goes, ‘You really want to do this again?”’
Mercer set an NCAA record for most wins by a first-year program in 2013, when the Bears went 10-2, but Lamb endured four losing seasons from 2015 through 2019 and was fired after going 4-8 in 2019.
He spent the 2020 season on Billy Napier’s staff at Louisiana as an assistant to the head coach. But after one year, he and Allyson decided to move back to the upstate of South Carolina so she could care for her father, who passed away from cancer in June.
Meanwhile, Anderson had announced in the fall of 2019 that it would be starting a football program. And when Bert Epting, the school’s athletic director, found out Lamb, also a former head coach at Furman, would be back in the area, he implored Lamb to visit campus.
“I was blown away,” Lamb said, admitting he had initial reservations about Anderson and the Division II landscape. “Like, ‘Oh Gosh. You’re really doing this?’”
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Lamb, now 60, accepted the job in July 2021. He had other opportunities to continue in an off-field, support role for younger coaches such as Napier, who he coached at Furman, but he wasn’t ready to pass up the thrill of being on the sidelines. Plus, by coaching at Anderson he’d be 37 miles from his mother-in-law and 61 miles from his 83- and 87-year-old parents in Commerce, Ga.
“My coaching buddies, they think I’m a genius because when I finish my coaching career, I’m gonna have like, six years where I had no record. I was 0-0,” said Lamb. “So they’re like, ‘Oh, what a genius.’
“But it is a rewarding thing that I really like. I really like that part about building.”
Lamb spent the first six months as the only coach on staff.
Then he hired offensive coordinator Seth Strickland from Albany State in Georgia and defensive backs coach Malik Chevry from Erskine in nearby Due West, S.C.
“The secret there was I hired two guys that were coaching at the Division II level,” Lamb said. “I wanted one offensive guy, one defensive guy and basically me and those two guys started the recruiting process.”
Division II recruiting in unique in that a large portion of the players will ultimately pay at least something out of pocket to attend school.
FBS programs, such as in-state Power 5 teams Clemson and South Carolina, offer 85 scholarships. FCS programs, such as Furman and Wofford, offer 63. Division II schools have just 36. Anderson’s players can stack their football money with any academic or financial aid and outside scholarships they receive in order to keep their costs as low as possible.
Crunching the numbers on who gets what is a balancing act for Division II programs that Strickland and Chevry are uniquely equipped to navigate. In order to save scholarships for future classes, the Trojans used about only 11 in the Class of 2023 — distributing that money among the recent signees.
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“Our model is based off of partial scholarships and so there’s a lot of budgeting that goes into that,” Strickland said. “Everybody watches the NFL Draft. Who goes first? The quarterbacks, the O-linemen, the D-linemen, corners, etc. And that’s where our money is most prioritized. So it’s a little bit of a blend of professional football, where you’ve got salaries — of course we’re giving scholarships — but a little bit of a blend of professional football and college football at this level.”
Lamb, Strickland and Chevry kicked off their recruiting efforts about a year ago by getting into as many South Carolina high schools as possible. They targeted FCS-level players who might have been right on the fringe for programs such as Wofford, Furman, South Carolina State and The Citadel.
Strickland, who played at South Carolina and spent six years on staff under Steve Spurrier and Will Muschamp, handles the Columbia area as well as the Lowcountry. Chevry recruited the Upstate and metro Atlanta while at Erskine and took on similar duties with the Trojans, in addition to adding Anderson County.
The trio spent about three weeks on the road last spring, hitting about 80 schools each. Lamb and his assistants also went to Atlanta and Charlotte for about two weeks each. Of the 56 signees in the Class of 2023, 40 are South Carolina natives while 13 come from Georgia. North Carolina and Maryland produced two and one signee, respectively.
“We had our camps in the summer in April and June,” Chevry said. “Those kind of helped us prepare for how it’s going to be when we get kids on campus. And then we did two, almost like, junior day visits or rising senior visits in the summer, and it was the three of us. We had 30 kids.”
Chevry, who graduated from Southeastern University in Florida in 2019, maintains there is a lot to sell about about playing football at Anderson.
He’d first talk with prospects about Lamb and the respect he has earned in college football circles.
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“I’ve known his name for a while and I’ve kind of met, throughout coaching, a few guys that worked for him and they all said great things,” Chevry said. “One guy, he said, ‘You’ll get to a point in your career, say when you’re at your next job, (and) you’re gonna wish that you were still working for Bobby Lamb.’”
Another part of the pitch was about adjusting as a freshman and how the players will have the benefit of acclimating to college in the fall of 2023 without the pressure of playing games.
“I went to college in Lakeland, Fla.,” Chevry said. “I had a Disney annual pass in college because we were 30 minutes from Orlando. Lived in a great area, went to a great school. But I cried to my mom in October of freshman year and wanted to come home just because of how much of an adjustment it is. To be able to go through all of that and not have to worry about playing games, it’s extremely beneficial.”
And then there was the opportunity to do something that’s never been done before.
“There’s nobody else on the team. So you’re first in line,” Strickland said. “It’s a unique opportunity, not only from a depth chart perspective, but you can have a chance to be the first person to catch a touchdown pass, make the first tackle. And regardless of what happens, you’re gonna be on the picture for the first team in school history.”
After signing day, Chevry joked that he finally got some rest.
Division II schools don’t have the resources of their Division I counterparts. Chevry, who taught himself photoshop and graphic design skills in college via YouTube, took the lead in editing the photoshoots in which recruits shared five generic jerseys and one helmet. They had no shoulder pads or official team pants.
Strickland finally was able to watch golf with his family and helped his brother move into a new house.
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But by Feb. 6, it was back to hosting some unsigned 2023 recruits first thing Monday morning.
The Trojans plan to open practice in August with about 90 players on the roster. Next week, it’ll be time to start thinking about the 2024 class. And in the meantime, the school is in the middle of constructing a 45,000-square foot football operations facility in the end zone of Spero Financial Field at Melvin and Dollie Younts Stadium.
Peacock, the defensive end, appreciates that Lamb is running things as though it were a Division I program.
“A lot of these recruits that have committed to Anderson, they had D-I offers and they had all these different interests,” Peacock said, adding he briefly communicated with Army during his recruiting process.
“We are choosing to go to Anderson. And I think that says a lot about the program (Lamb) is creating.”
(Top photo: Grace Raynor / The Athletic)
