Aug. 2, 2008

Coaching football at the college level is not for those who struggle with a weak work ethic. While many of us measure a work day from nine to five, it might take some coaches that long just to perfect their practice schedule.

"The working part is not an issue," says Wake Forest's rookie defensive coordinator. "We're ready to get after it."

Brad Lambert learned how to work on the flatlands of western Kansas where sixteen hours a day behind the big wheel of a tractor were simply what it took to get the job done in the summertime. There wasn't much time for anything else but eating and sleeping.

And football.

"It's all I thought about," admits Lambert, said with a glint of anticipation in his eye and a relaxed drawl that sounds more like Mississippi or Alabama than Jayhawk.

As Lambert worked the miles of corn or wheat that lay ahead of him his mind was really on the sport that consumed him. It might have been a Kansas City Royals baseball game he had playing on the radio, but the focus was football. Playing it - not coaching it.

"At that point of my life I didn't really think much past playing," Lambert explains. "I had such a desire to play the game, to play college football and to get to that point - that was my focus. I wasn't thinking about coaching. I know that."

"The number one thing I always thought about was preparing myself for the game and studying the game - because I wasn't the biggest guy. I was always looking for and thinking of ways to gain an advantage as a player."

Lambert gained enough advantage at Hoxie High School to catch the watchful eyes of Kansas State recruiters. He went on to earn four letters while playing defensive back for the Wildcats under secondary coach Sherwood Taylor - the father of one-time Deacon recruit and Nebraska starting quarterback Zach Taylor. Sherwood Taylor had played for Barry Switzer at Oklahoma and was instrumental in planting the "coaching bug" in Lambert and recommending him for a graduate assistant spot under Switzer and the Sooners. Lambert took the bait and has never looked back.

And so he has labored through stops at Oklahoma, Marshall, Georgia and Wake Forest and risen under Jim Grobe to head the Deacon defense, taking over for close friend Dean Hood who took the head coaching job at Eastern Kentucky following the 2007 season. Lambert is counting on Wake Forest fans being able to recognize the type of defense they see in 2008.

"Hopefully that'll be the case," he says. "Dean and I and Ray [McCartney] and Keith [Henry] came up with what we do together - it's part of all of us. And we've only changed one coach. We always want to be an attacking 4-3 defense that creates turnovers and tackles well. That's been our focus and it will continue to be."

It's easy to like Brad Lambert. He possesses many of the same qualities he admires in Jim Grobe including a mix of humility and toughness that seems too often lost in the pampered, ego-driven business of big-time college football. He has passed on opportunities to leave Winston-Salem - jobs that would have paid more and likely put him on a quicker track toward being a head coach. But faith and family and Jim Grobe have kept him put.

Brad Lambert has traded the hours sitting on top of a tractor with hours staring at a video screen. And the farm boy from Kansas bristles with his new assignment and talk of another start to a football season.

"The smell of the grass is just different this time of year," Lambert says with a smile. "I can't wait to get started."

Sounds like a farmer - knowing that the harvest is near.