With cool, crisp air and classes starting, it can only mean one thing: football is finally here.

Bobby Wallace returns to UNA for his twelfth season at the helm of the Lions football program and his second since returning to Florence last January.

Wallace has spent most of his adult life coaching college football.

He lived in Jackson, Miss. and said he played many sports in high school.

“I had a great high school career,” he said.

He signed with Mississippi State University in 1972 and started for the Bulldogs for three seasons, he said.

“It was fun and we went to the Sun Bowl my junior year,” he said. “I stayed (as a graduate assistant) and that is when I was hired by Pat Dye.”

In 1997, he left the Bulldogs staff to join Dye at East Carolina University to coach the defensive backs.

Wallace followed Dye to Wyoming in 1980 and to Auburn in 1981. He spent five years at Auburn before he left to become the defensive coordinator for Mississippi State in 1986. In 1987, he became the defensive backs coach for Illinois University.

In 1988, the University of North Alabama named Wallace as their new head football coach. UNA was up and down for the first five seasons that he was in Florence — the Lions had three winning seasons and two losing seasons.

“I just got into a situation where I just wanted to get back to coaching in the South,” he said. “Eventually I wanted to be a head coach, but it wasn’t like I was dying to be one. The UNA job came open and everybody who coaches in the South knows about the Gulf South Conference.”

In 1993, the Lions went 14-0 and won their first National Championship.

The next two seasons ended the same, totaling three-straight National Championships.

After a 6-5 season in 1996 and a 9-3 season in 1997, Wallace left UNA to become the head coach at Temple University.

“I was fortunate to be hired here at a young age, and I had 10 great years here, but you know the Big East was a tremendous conference back in 1998,” he said.

Wallace struggled at the Division-I level, as the Owls went 19-71 over eight seasons.

In 2006, Wallace returned to the GSC and to Alabama, but this time he went to Livingston to coach the University of West Alabama Tigers.

“The West Alabama job came open and that gave me an opportunity to come out of retirement and get back in the GSC,” he said.

He led the Tigers to the second round of the NCAA Division-II playoffs in 2009. In 2010, he retired from coaching.

On January 2, 2012, Wallace returned to UNA to become the head coach of the Lions for his twelfth season.

“I retired and then this job came back open, and Florence is the place I love,” he said.

The Lions went 5-5 in his first season back.