Former W&L Football Coach To Lead Rice

Former W&L Football Coach To Lead Rice

Former Washington and Lee University head football coach Scott Abell is making the jump from the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) to the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS).

American Athletic Conference member Rice announced on Tuesday of last week it has hired Abell as its new head coach.

Abell stepped down from FCS member Davidson College to take Rice’s reins. Both teams are Division I schools. At Davidson, Abell was the all-time winningest coach at Davidson, going 47-28 in seven seasons at the Pioneer Football League school. He took over a program that had not had a winning season since 2007, but Abell had a winning record every year at Davidson. This fall, Davidson went 6-5 overall and 4-4 in the conference.

At W&L, a Division III school, Abell went 39-24 in six years before leaving for the Davidson job in January 2018. He guided W&L to three Old Dominion Athletic Conference crowns and four winning seasons. He won ODAC coach of the year honors three times and was the W&L offensive coordinator for four years before being promoted.

Abell also served as the head coach at Liberty High School and Amherst County High School.

Rice, which went 3-8 overall and 2-5 in the conference this year, fired head coach Mike Bloomgren in late October, ending the season with Pete Alamar as its interim head coach.

Abell and his wife, Crissie, have two children, Porter and Emily. Crissie coached the cheerleading team at Rockbridge County High School when Porter and Emily attended. Porter, a 2013 Rockbridge County High School graduate who played football at RC and then for Rocco at the University of Richmond before graduating in 2017, has been serving as Davidson’s recruiting coordinator while coaching wide receivers and tight ends since January 2018. Emily, a 2016 RC graduate, was a cheerleader in high school and then at High Point University, where she graduated from in 2020. She’s now a teacher in Charlotte, N.C.