Mercer Football Team Holds Scrimmage During Homecoming

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Mercer University is celebrating its homecoming this weekend, but this year, there was a new addition to the festivities: Football.

No, the Bears haven’t started playing against competition yet, but they did have an intersquad match-up in front of a large crowd at the Moye Football and Lacrosse Complex on Saturday.

Construction on the stadium isn’t quite finished, so the school actually had to limit the number of fans who could attend.

Head coach Bobby Lamb says 125 recruits were on hand at the scrimmage, along with their families.  Add those numbers to the hundreds who packed the hill in front of the fieldhouse, and there were probably 1,000 people in attendance.

Lamb says he wishes more could have gotten in to watch, but the crowd that was there gave his team a little extra incentive.

“The excitement here in middle Georgia and Macon connected with Mercer has just been overwhelming,” says Lamb.  “For us to be a part of the homecoming activities is important.  As we all know, football schools that have homecoming weekends are big, big weekends.  We look forward to making it big, big–making those weekends very big in the future.”

Lamb says having such a long period before his team plays its first actual game is kind of like being able to redshirt his whole team.

The Bears are still a long way away from their first game against NAIA member Reinhardt on August 31, 2013.