Wiedmer: A UTC football season to erase 30 years of heartache

photo The UTC team poses for a photo after the Mocs' 31-13 win over the Wofford Terriers on Nov. 8, 2014, at Finley Stadium in Chattanooga. The win netted the Mocs the SoCon championship and a spot in the playoffs.

Eighty-five-year-old Harry Arnold and his bride of 66 years, Betty, were where they almost always are on Sunday mornings, attending church at Oakwood Baptist.

Fifty-one Sundays out of 52, their daughter, Jayne Holder, would almost certainly have joined them there. But not this particular Sunday. Not with the NCAA's Football Championship Series playoff selection committee about to announce the fate of her beloved University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Mocs.

"That's probably where I should have been, in church," said Holder as she joined a couple of hundred UTC fans, players, coaches and administrators at the University Center auditorium to watch the FCS selection show late Sunday morning.

"But I just couldn't miss this."

For 30 straight frustrating football seasons, UTC has missed out on these playoffs, even as its own Finley Stadium hosted the FCS national championship game for 13 consecutive Decembers from 1997 through 2009.

But two weekends ago the Mocs earned their first playoff berth since 1984 by winning their first outright Southern Conference championship since that time. On Sunday they learned such good work delivered them a first-round bye before they'll welcome the Eastern Kentucky-Indiana State winner to Finley on Saturday, Dec. 6, at 1 p.m.

"Just an incredible feeling," said senior offensive lineman Chris Mayes, who transferred to UTC from Navy after his freshman year. "I remember going 5-6 (his redshirt year), then 6-5, then coming so close last year."

Then his words stopped for a moment.

Asked if he got a little teary-eyed when the word "Chattanooga" appeared on the screen as the 24-team tourney's No. 8 seed, Mayes answered, "Almost."

There was no almost for Holder, who graduated from UTC in 1974 and now answers to Assistant Vice-Chancellor for Alumni Affairs.

"I cried," she said. "It was just a culmination of what this team means to so many of us in Chattanooga. I think I saw (former chancellor) Dr. (Fred) Obear shed a few tears, too."

We don't think of such emotions often being stirred at hyphen or directional schools such as UTC or Eastern Kentucky or Southeastern Louisiana. There's a sense that most supporters of those programs have a more passionate interest in Big State U., that the UTCs and EKUs of the world are backup plans for when the big boys are either struggling or off.

But UTC's been playing football since at least 1904, the majority of those years not tethered to big brother UT. The name Chattanooga once proudly stood on its own in Southern football lore, mostly due to the crafty and cunning coaching of A.C. "Scrappy" Moore, who oversaw the "Scrappy Mocs" for 35 years at grand ol' Chamberlain Field.

"I became a Mocs fan in the late 1940s," said Arnold, who along with his wife was a 1948 graduate of Central High School before going to work for DuPont. "I had friends from Central who ended up playing there and started going to all the games. I remember a Thanksgiving Day game there one year when it was so warm I was in a short-sleeve shirt and got a sunburn. The next day I came out of work at DuPont and it was snowing."

He and Betty still go to every home game, their Finley seats, "right on the 50-yard-line. The Good Lord willing, I'll be at the playoff game. I think we've already reserved our tickets."

This is the way it should be for a 9-3 Mocs team that went 7-0 in an admittedly weakened Southern Conference, though its average margin of victory in league games was an eye-popping 26.3 ppg.

How deserving is UTC of a first-round bye? It won 51-0 at Western Carolina, which fell 48-14 at Alabama on Saturday.

It's certainly a far cry from 30 years ago, when UTC limped into the playoffs with a 6-4 record that included a 16-0 home loss to Arkansas State, only to be sent to Jonesboro, Ark., for the playoffs, where it lost to ASU a second time, 37-10.

"One thing I'll always remember about that game," said Jim Reynolds, the longtime Voice of the Mocs, "is that we checked into our hotel in Jonesboro on Friday just in time to see (Boston College quarterback) Doug Flutie throw the Hail Mary pass against Miami."

Thirty years later, Mayes says the Hail Mary wish that wasn't answered for last year's team -- a playoff berth for a shared SoCon title -- has motivated this team every day since.

"We've even got signs that read '11-24-13,' which was the date of last year's selection show, when we found out we weren't getting in. We printed those signs so we'd never forget that feeling."

Now they have a different feeling to remember, a feeling of joy and accomplishment and realistic hope that the grand work of sixth-year coach Russ Huesman and his staff will make the next 30 years far more memorable than the last.

Said UTC athletic director David Blackburn, a broad smile on his face, "I don't want to sound arrogant, but I really believe this is just the start for this football program."

As some folks might have said in church Sunday morning after the Mocs' 30-year walk in the wilderness: Amen.

Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com

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