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Sports Views: Texas A&M University-Commerce's football season should be interesting

david claybourn, rockwall county herald-banner, greenville, texas
·4 min read

Mar. 26—I'm looking forward to the upcoming football season for the Texas A&M University-Commerce Lions.

The Lions will be in their second season in NCAA Division I FCS and their second in the Southland Conference after moving up from NCAA Division II and leaving the Lone Star Conference. They were national champions in football in 2017 and 1972.

But this will be their first season with Clint Dolezel as the head football coach. Dolezel was an interesting hire because he hasn't coached at the college level but he's a former Lion quarterback and he was a player and a coach in professional indoor football.

He completed 3,749 passes in his indoor playing career for 44,564 yards and 931 touchdowns and also ran for 41 touchdowns.

As an indoor professional head coach he had a 114-50 career record (.695) and a 12-7 mark in the postseason.

I'm expecting the Lions, under Dolezel's leadership, to be really good at throwing the football. But Dolezel says the Lions will also stress the running game. It's hard these days in offensive-minded football to win as a pass-only or run-only offense.

Last season the Lions ranked fourth in the Southland Conference in total offense at 364.5 yards per game. Incarnate Word was the Kingpin at 583.3.

The Lions were fifth in passing at 219.6 ypg and sixth in rushing (144.8).

The Lions ranked first in the league in defense, giving up 305 yards per game. Dolezel said the Lions expect to be strong on defense again.

A&M-Commerce surprised a lot of people last year when the Lions won their first three Southland games but dropped their last three to wound up tied with Nicholls for fourth place in the conference standings at 3-3. Incarnate Word and Southeastern Louisiana tied for first at 5-1 and Northwestern State was 4-2.

Dolezel threw for 3,152 yards and 22 touchdowns in the 1992 and 1993 seasons for the Lions and also lettered in track and field as a high jumper and javelin thrower and lettered in golf.

"I owe this college a lot," he said at a press conference announcing his hiring.

Dolezel told me he likes good all-around athletes as recruits. One of the Lions' recent high school signees, Lake Bennett of Rockwall, was the most valuable player of District 10-6A after quarterbacking the Yellowjackets to the district football title. Bennett threw for 2,214 yards and 18 touchdowns last season and rushed for 321 yards and 10 TDs.

Bennett is also a standout baseball player and throws the discus in track and field.

The Lions will show a good glimpse of what to expect in the fall during their Blue-Gold game that wraps up spring training on April 22. — David Bailiff, A&M-Commerce's previous head football coach, has returned to his alma mater, Texas State, as a special assistant to the head football coach G.J. Kinne.

Bailiff was a standout offensive lineman at then Southwest Texas State from 1977-1980 and was the Bobcats' head football coach from 2004-2006 and the head coach at Rice from 2007-2017. — Former Texas A&M University-Commerce pitcher Alyssa LeBlanc set a new Lone Star Conference record when she struck out 23 Angelo State batters in a recent game for Texas Woman's University.

LeBlanc was named the LSC's Pitcher of the Week following that performance but was also selected later as the LSC's Hitter of the Week after batting 10-for-13 with five home runs and 10 runs batted in during the Pioneers' three-game sweep of UT Permian Basin.

LeBlanc is playing for Gay McNutt, TWU's new head coach who coached the Lions to a 43-15 record in her one season as the A&M-Commerce head softball coach in 2022. — It's great to see Rodney Webb back coaching in the Rockwall-Royse City area. Webb, who coached the Rockwall Yellowjackets and the Royse City Bulldogs to state semifinal appearances in football, was named this week as the new head football coach at Rockwall-Heath.

Webb lived in Heath for 13 yards and now resides in Rockwall so he's uniquely qualified to coach at Heath. He has been serving as the athletic director at Highland Park following a two-year stint as the head football coach at Denton Guyer.

It should be interesting when the Heath Hawks play Rockwall, Royse City and Mesquite Horn in District 10-6A next season. He was a head coach at all three of the other programs.

David Claybourn is sports editor of the Herald-Banner.