Here is some early morning #SCOOP for our Niner brethren.  GTG has learned that Napoleon Sykes will be joining the Niners staff in the near future.  Sykes played under Lambert 2003-05 at Wake Forest.  After his time at Wake was done, Sykes returned (2006) to his former high school stomping grounds at the Gilman School (MD) as an assistant.  The following year he joined Mallard Creek High’s staff here in Charlotte as a Co-Defensive coordinator, then spent the next two years as a Graduate Assistant at Wake.

Sykes will be leaving Navy’s football program to reunite with Lambert and company.  In Sykes first year at Navy, he was an assistant coach in the secondary and assisted with the outside linebacking core this year.

Sykes appears to be one of the first of quite a few coaching dominoes to fall in the near future.

A special guest post from our first Green Jacket Level Donor, NinerID…

On Thursday members of the 49ers athletic department gave a presentation at the Southern Conference meeting in Charleston, SC.  The main issue being an associate member of the conference, for football only.

The 49ers start play in 2013 so it is safe to assume that associate membership would not begin until the 2015 season.

With no conference home, and no guaranteed games, Charlotte has been very busy setting up future schedules.  In 2014, the 49ers will face 4 SoCon opponents, Furman (11/15), the Citadel, Georgia Southern, and Western Carolina.

School presidents, from the SoCon schools will vote on Charlotte at the June 16^th meeting.

Indications are that the SoCon will turn down Charlotte as an associate member, as the Colonial Athletic Association was rumored to have done back in March.

The SoCon would benefit by adding what would be the largest school in the conference in any involvement.  Charlotte would also fill in a regional gap should Appalachian State decide to jump ship to the FBS.

Before a crowd of more than 3,000 elated onlookers, Charlotte Men’s Soccer Captain Isaac Coughran split the uprights on a windy 25 yard field goal attempt (with a little help from yours truly), scoring the first 3 points in Charlotte 49er Football history yesterday, as the Charlotte 49ers broke ground on our 15,000 seat stadium. Coughran’s kick signaled the smoke and confetti as Head Coach Brad Lambert, and Niner Nation Gold President Micah Powers, pushed their front-end loaders into the soft turf while a group of many others dug into the 49er logo painted on the ground with their pick-axes. Construction of the future home for our Gridiron Niners had officially begun.

Before the ceremonial groundbreaking, esteemed guest speakers such as Board of Trustees Chairman (and alumnus) Gene Johnson and 49er Football God Mac Everett, reminded us all how far we’ve come and urged the crowd to understand just how fortunate we are. A rousing speech by Student Body President Megan Smith drew loud cheers and maybe even a few tears as she recounted the many steps that the Charlotte Football Initiative, students, alumni, and supporters of Charlotte Football have taken to make yesterday a reality. Coach Lambert, sounding like a proud father about to witness the birth of his child, gave us the sound bite that best sums up the day: “Now, it feels real. It’s no longer just talk.”

OddJob doing his part. - credit Charlotte Observer

Coach was right. Yesterday, for the first time, The Niner Nation got a taste of what Saturdays in the fall are supposed to be. We’re definitely not behind the curve on tailgating, either. Much to the chagrin of our detractors, there were no complaints about grill smoke and no one got arrested for being punk in drublic (probably because the new University Police RV is SO INTIMIDATING!!) Even on a smaller scale than what we’ll see in 2013, it was apparent to everyone in attendance that Charlotte Football games are going to be an event that the whole city can rally around. And we still have 2 more years to perfect our barbecue recipes, to boot!

What an outstanding event put on yesterday by the Athletic Department and Events Planning Office. No expense was spared and it showed. The only thing that could have made yesterday any better is if the Panthers #1 draft pick didn’t have to dominate the headlines (but rest assured, there was media coverage aplenty!)

April 28, 2011 is a day that many will never forget. As citizens of The Niner Nation, we now have the very distinct privilege of watching our stadium rise from the mud and rock formerly known as Robert and Miriam Hayes Recreation Fields. The only thing missing is a name for our new home. Let’s hope there were some influential, deep-pocketed individuals there yesterday. There is no way that anyone could have left feeling less than inspired.

From the Big House to the New House, today, the Charlotte 49ers Head Coach Brad Lambert named his Defensive Coordinator, Bruce Tall.  The hire maxed out Coach Lambert’s staff at five for the 2011 calendar year, having previously hired Offensive Coordinator, Jeff Mullen, Director of Football Operations, Trevor Lambert, and Recruiting Coordinator James Adams.  Coach Lambert can hire the rest of his staff in 2012, but for now he has his football team for the foreseeable future, and for the Spring recruiting period that started April 15th.

New Man on Campus, Bruce Tall, Charlotte 49er Defensive Coordinator

Coach Tall comes from the University of Michigan, where he was the defensive line coach for the Wolverines.  Tall has 28 years of coaching experience at the collegiate level.  At Michigan, Tall coached elite talent, namely Brandon Graham, a Second Team All-American defensive end who was drafted in 2010, 13th overall by the Philadelphia Eagles.  Prior to spending the last three season with Michigan, Tall was the defensive backs coach at West Virginia, under Rich Rodriguez from 2002-2007, leading a resurgence of the Mountaineer program.  Before West Virginia, Tall spent time coaching the defensive line at Western Michigan where he tutored All-MAC, MAC Player of the Year, and Second-Team All-American Jason Babin (Drafted in 2004, 27th overall by the Tennessee Titans).  Coach Tall also has FCS coaching experience at Northeastern and Harvard, where his teams constantly produced one of the best rush defenses in FCS (#1 rush defense two of his four seasons at Harvard, #2 rush defense once in four seasons at Northeastern).

Having the last hire out of the way (and the story actually reported by the Charlotte Observer before us) is good news and allows the staff to focus solely on the construction of the football program and recruiting.  Welcome to Niner Nation, Coach Tall!

GTG has unraveled a decent amout of information, unfortunately someone had some fun on Twitter this morning, and out April 1st credibility probably took a hit.

First, some Football news

GTG has heard two different rumors (one piece now confirmed) about Brad Lambert’s staff, possibly conflicting, but we are looking at them as two separate pieces of information:

• The first information we have is that on Monday, a coach will be joining the Niners from an undisclosed SoCon program and will use the weekend to meet with his current players.  It will leave us with one more coach to add this year.
• The next information is that Wake Forests Assistant Director of Football Operations, and nephew of Head Coach Brad Lambert, Trevor Lambert, is confirmed to be taking on the roll of Director of Football Operations for the Charlotte 49ers, beginning Monday.

Once again, these are two seperate pieces of information.

On the Basketball front, recruitng news and some new scheduling speculation.

• A new name has popped up on the Men’s Basketball radar, Ari Stewart.  Stewart is transferring out of Wake Forest and will have 2 years of eligibility.  No schools have been officially listed for Stewart, nor a timeline to select a program.
• The new tournament in Nassau had been on the radar for Charlotte fans, but it has been learned that UMass will be in the Battle 4 Atlantis, and as a fellow Atlantic 10 school, Charlotte will not be participating in this event. UMass did have to abandon plans for ESPN’s Cancun Governor’s Cup, leaving an opening that an Atlantic 10 school, much like Charlotte, would be eligible to fill. This tournament takes place around Christmas unlike the recent string of November events the 49ers have been participants of. In a recent post by DOBO Rob Perron on Basketball Travelers bulletin board Charlotte has “Several dates in Nov. available.” Which could just be the regular amount of November games, but it’s more fun to think that we have more games to schedule in November because or MTE is in December. Parties involved on different fronts with ESPN’s Cancun Governor’s Cup have been reached out to today, with no response yet.

GTG has learned that the 2 new Football staffers will be joining the program with in the next month and a half. One assistant will join on April 1st, the 2nd addition for this year will join on May 1st.  The rest of the staff will be completed in 2012.

Remember that football’s open period for recruiting starts on April 15th, much better than tax day!

Beware of candidates getting campus tours in one of our fine University golf carts

Coach Lambert takes the podium after his introduction as the Niners first head football coach.

After years of waiting, months of speculation, and weeks of message board flaming over who our football program’s first head coach would be The Niner Nation finally has an answer:  Brad Lambert.  Coach Lambert was officially introduced to his new collegiate family in a press conference held today at Halton Arena on the campus of UNC Charlotte.

Coach Lambert comes to Charlotte from Wake Forest University where he has served on Jim Grobe’s staff for 10 years, the last three as Defensive Coordinator.  Lambert’s first announcement as HC was that he has hired an Offensive Coordinator, Jeff Mullen, formerly of West Virginia University and Wake Forest University.  Lambert and Mullen coached together on the Wake Forest squad that went to the 2006 Orange Bowl on the shoulders of Quarterback Riley Skinner, who was in attendance today along with several other former players including Aaron Curry and Stanley Arnoux.

Lambert was quite impressive in his opening press conference.  Many citizens of The Niner Nation were pleading for a big name hire such as Chuck Amato to “energize” the fan base and make a splash in the community.  While virtually unknown outside of college football circles before today, Lambert’s passion and excitement for the game and for the program has the ability to breathe new life into the Charlotte 49ers Athletic Department, despite whatever the nay-sayers that anonymously post comments on Charlotte Disturber blogs would have you believe.  I was there.  I felt the energy in the room.  Lambert will be just fine here.

Still don’t believe me?  Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzsxZe4XLm8 and tell me you wouldn’t go to battle for our coach.  I certainly would.

We at GTG.net are excited and cannot wait to see what our new coach is capable of both on and off the field.  Lambert will have a great amount of work to do over the next 900 days and change.  First and foremost, he will have to be a salesman of the program; to recruits, to the public, to the FSL holders, and to the media.  As of now, consider me sold.  Welcome to Charlotte, Coach Lambert!

Coach Lambert giving his first of many autographs as Niners head football coach.

One more thing that must be said about today’s (otherwise stellar) press conference:  Nothing like a good ‘ole Freudian Slip by CHP Dubois.  At the 18:15 mark of this video:  http://www.fansonly.com/schools/ncch/allaccess/?media=233420 CHP announces that he and Judy will “officially be retiring from the front lines of UNC football.”  CHP would have you believe that name confusion is not a problem. Denial is more than just a river in Egypt, CHP.

-Oddjob

Sources confirmed to GTG last week that Brad Lambert, Wake Forest’s Defensive Coordinator, will be the first Head Coach for Charlotte 49er Football. The athletic department announced today that there will be a press conference tomorrow at the Barnhardt Student Activity Center tomorrow at noon for the formal announcement.

Check back into GreenTintedGlasses.Net for a report on the press conference tomorrow.

The Charlotte 49ers Athletic Department held its first in a series of “Town Hall” style meetings today at McKnight Hall in the Cone Center on the campus of UNC Charlotte. This meeting was intended to be geared towards the on-campus community including faculty, staff, and students, but was open to the general public and media. The next meeting will likely be in the fall of 2011, “when there is a need to share more and newer information.”

Presentations at the meeting were given by Chancellor Phil Dubois, Athletics Director Judy Rose, and Jenkins-Peer Architecture Group spokesman Dan Van Dyke.

Mr. Van Dyke showed a number of renderings of the on campus football facility and gave a timeline for its completion, which is expected in August of 2012. These renderings were the same ones we’ve already seen a million times before, with the sole exception being the new recreation field relocation dubbed Rec 3, 5, and 6. These fields are going to be built on the current practice soccer fields adjacent to the Wachovia Field House and Softball complex. Fields 3 and 5 will be natural grass surface and field 6 will be artificial turf. Construction of these fields will begin later this month and their completion is expected in June of this year.

Judy Rose’s presentation included information about the KICK-OFF 2013 committee work in progress, with special mention given to the Tailgating Subcommittee’s continued work on ironing out a sound set of policies and coming up with recommendations for the best locations for tailgating to take place.

Ms. Rose also spoke about the creation of a Student Ticketing Committee which was recently formed and is being chaired by Ticketing Manager John George. This committee will be working extensively to prepare the best ticketing plan for students so that they may actively participate in tailgating while still rewarding the students based on Niner Nation Loyalty Points.

Rose mentioned that she is working diligently to find a conference home for the grid-iron Niners. Discussions with the Big South, Southern, and Colonial conferences have been “positive.” “Ideally,” said Rose, “we would keep all of our sports in the Atlantic 10 Conference while becoming an ‘associate member’ of another conference” for football, much like the University of Richmond or Temple University.

She also said that we currently have one more game to schedule for the 2013 (presumably an away game) and that the Niners will be playing the Virginia Tech Hokies in Blacksburg to open the 2019 season.

Highlights from the Q&A period:

Q. How many FSL’s have been sold to date?
A. 3,357 translating to about $4.15 million (2,843 “Green Tier” and 514 “Gold Tier”)
Q. How successful have meetings and proposals with potential corporate sponsors been regarding naming rights, title sponsorships, etc?
A. We currently have 17 donors that have contributed just over $1.8 million. We have a number of proposals currently in front of potential corporate sponsors who will not be mentioned, but there is “a lot of interest” from these sponsors.

Q. Can you talk about your marketing strategy in regards to reaching out to alumni that are currently disconnected or have not returned to the school in a number of years?
A. We have already done a lot to reach out to these alumni have since the beginning of the football journey. Building the website was a big first step, and with the upcoming milestones such as the groundbreaking and hiring of a coach, we hope that there will be more interest generated in the very near future.

Q. There is a line item in the upcoming budget proposal for 2014 that includes a $60 million fund for stadium expansion. Can you discuss this a little bit?
A. i) (Phil Jones – Facilities) – Some of these things on these budget proposals are like a wish-list for potential funding requests in the future. We will not be expanding the stadium any time soon.
iii) (Phil Dubois) – The current list of upcoming capital projects is a new science building, followed by a renovation of the Burson Building.

Q. Can you talk about when FSL holders will get to pick their seats?
A. In the spring of 2013, and the selection process will be done similarly to how we did it at Halton Arena.

This will have to wait.

- Added to the football schedule for 2013 are three home games: Chowan, UNC Pembroke, and Northern Greenville. The updated schedule can be found here.
- Marching band costs around $250,000 annually, not to mention start up costs. We want a band eventually but only when the budget will allow for it.
- The stadium has been discussed for mixed use, such as hosting High School Football Championship games or the Shriner’s Classic in the future, and these discussions will continue.
- The committee chair trip to ODU was incredibly valuable. One of the most important things we gathered from ODU is that the addition of a Division I football program will expose every weakness of your university. It will also be a vital addition for the recruiting of other athletes for other sports.
- Danny Morris from the Carolina Panthers has expressed the willingness to help our program in whatever way possible, and would be open to the idea of using Bank of America Stadium in the future for a “big draw” game.

I took very diligent notes and would be happy to answer any other questions regarding what was said or asked during the meeting. If you did not see a particular issue addressed, please leave me a comment below and I will do my best to give you as much information as possible based on what was said.

Much thanks goes to OddJob for this special, on location, report. If any other contributors had gone, they were likely to have been tased.

Today, the Furman Paladins announced a series with the Charlotte 49ers for the 2014 and 2015 football seasons. The Paladins finished 6th in the Southern Conference with a 5-6 overall record for the 2010 season. In 2009 the Paladins were third in conference with a 6-5 overall record.

The series will begin at Furman on November 15th, 2014 and return to Charlotte at a to be determined date in 2015. The Paladins are the first team to be scheduled for the 2015 season. Information on the 2013, 2014 and 2015 schedules can be found here. With 2015 being our third season and the first we are allowed to play in a conference, it would be easy to assume that a scheduled game with Furman unofficially knocks the Southern Conference off the list of potential football conferences.