Rick Hart

University of Georgia running backs coach Tony Ball has interviewed for the head coaching job at his alma mater.

But another candidate for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football position, North Alabama coach Mark Hudspeth, appears to be off the market.

Ball, a Chattanooga native, sat down with UTC athletic director Rick Hart on Friday at 10 a.m. in Athens, Ga., and the two talked until about 3 p.m., Ball said Saturday.

“I thought it went well,” said Ball, who graduated from UTC in 1983 with a degree in criminal justice. “We sat around and got to know one another. We talked about our backgrounds, our philosophical beliefs, those kinds of things.”

A running back who also excelled as a kick returner — he holds the school record for highest kickoff return average in a season at 37.7 yards, set in 1977 — Ball immediately was regarded by many as a leading candidate for the job when Hart announced on Oct. 21 that coach Rodney Allison’s sixth season at UTC would be his last.

However, it wasn’t until Friday that Ball was able to finally make his pitch.

“Because of my situation here at Georgia and being as busy as I’ve been, I really haven’t been too stressed out about it,” Ball said of the long wait.

He began his coaching career in 1985 as a graduate assistant at Austin Peay, where he earned his master’s degree, and later served two stints as UTC’s receivers coach (1988 and 1990-91). In 1998 he began a lengthy run as the receivers coach at Virginia Tech before going to Georgia in 2006.

Ball is at least the the fifth person to interview for the UTC job, joining Kentucky quarterbacks coach Randy Sanders, Lambuth University head coach Hugh Freeze, UT-Martin head coach and former UTC offensive coordinator Jason Simpson, Hudspeth and Appalachian State linebackers coach Dale Jones, who is a Cleveland, Tenn., native.

Hudspeth met with Hart on Tuesday, but the former Delta State quarterback resigned from UNA on Saturday and, according to the Florence (Ala.) Times Daily, accepted a job as the wide receivers coach/passing game coordinator on Dan Mullen’s staff at Mississippi State.

Hart said in an interview with the Times Free Press on Thursday that he planned to talk to two more coaches: one he expected to interview Friday. That turned out to be Ball. The other was on hold because of the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, and while he didn’t mention any names, Hart was undoubtedly referring to Richmond defensive coordinator Russ Huesman, who was a teammate of Ball’s at UTC.

Hart has said next to nothing about specific candidates during the search, but he said Thursday that there’s no clear front-runner at this point.

“There’s very little that differentiates these individuals as it relates to the type of people they are and the type of coaches they are,” he said, “so you look for other, more intangible traits and characteristics and try and evaluate those.”

Hart said he hopes to begin bringing in candidates for on-campus interviews this week. Huesman is headed to town regardless, after Richmond rallied to beat Northern Iowa 21-20 in an FCS semifinal Saturday. The Spiders will play Montana in the championship game at Finley Stadium on Friday night.