If the steady, heady rise of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football can be measured in a single person, it might be redshirt senior linebacker Nakevion Leslie.
Heading into the winter of 2012, Leslie had options but no offers. Not a one.
"I thought about walking on somewhere," said the Powder Springs, Ga., native. "I've always been a big Florida Gators fan."
But walking on costs money. Sometimes lots of money. And it rarely leads to a scholarship, though it's hard to imagine a player of Leslie's talents - he's a preseason FCS All-American - not eventually earning a free ride anywhere and everywhere that college football is played, including Florida.
UTC coach Russ Huesman was about to change all that, however. Watching Leslie play cornerback during a practice for a Cobb County, Ga., all-star game, Huesman was more than a little impressed with the player's footwork.
"If you want team speed, you make cornerbacks into safeties and safeties into linebackers," the coach said. "That philosophy goes back to the Miami Hurricanes when Jimmy Johnson was their coach."
Let the record show that Johnson went 52-9 during five years as the the coach of the Hurricanes, including the 1987 national championship.
Yet earning a scholarship is not the same as earning playing time, especially when you've arrived at college as a 205-pound linebacker.
"(UTC) took a chance on me, but I needed to gain weight," Leslie said Tuesday, two days before the Mocs' season opener at Finley Stadium against Shorter. "I started eating lots of fast food, lots of junk food."
This became easier on those autumn weekends when the football team hit the road while the true freshman Leslie remained home as a redshirt.
"We'd be back at the dorm ordering pizza," he said with a smile. "I'd usually order Domino's because it was faster."
And what kind of pizza would he order?
"Pepperoni, sometimes bacon," Leslie replied. "Anything's better with bacon. I ate a lot of cookies, too."
Here again, there's heavy weight and healthy weight. While he soon reached 220, it didn't feel the way he wanted it to feel. He also didn't think it looked the way he wanted it to look to impress the coeds.
"I hit the weight room harder," he said. "I started eating better. I think I started to look a little better."
Almost no one looks better all by his lonesome. As a politician once said, it takes a village. So while Leslie is understandably proud of the program his 2012 recruiting class has helped build - ironically, the lone recruiting class Huesman has signed not rated in the top 10 of FCS rankings - the program's improvement on the field isn't all that excites him.
Pointing to the unsung reasons why the Mocs may have won outright or shared the past three Southern Conference championships and gone 27-12 overall after the team posted a 6-5 mark during the season he redshirted, Leslie said, "They feed us better. They take better care of us. It feels like a championship program now."
No one understands the depth and reach of that statement more than Huesman. Of the seemingly simple plan to feed his Mocs more nutritious food, he said, "(The University of Tennessee's) smoothie budget is probably higher than our whole food budget."
But, he added, "We've got great friends of the program. So many great supporters. We ask if we can get $2,500 for supplements, and they deliver. Same with better food. We know what an important component that is for a winning program. We had to make that commitment, and our fans stepped up. And Scott Brincks (UTC's director of athletic performance) and his staff have been terrific at strength and conditioning and diet for our players."
Another example: When the school approached Huesman about playing the Shorter game on Thursday night, he said he would on one condition: His team would get to stay in a hotel on Wednesday night and treat Thursday as if it was on the road, rather than having to attend class until 1:50 that afternoon for a 7 p.m. kickoff.
The school obliged, as any championship-acting program might.
Also, the seniors embraced their leadership roles. Because Huesman has never been a uniform guy, caught up in what color pants, helmets and socks his teams wear, he forgot to ask his captains to choose over the weekendto make it easier for the equipment staff on game week.
"So I came in this morning and texted (defensive end and captain) Keionta (Davis)," Huesman explained during Tuesday's media luncheon. "He said they wanted to wear white pants. I asked if that was him or everybody. He said it was everybody, that they'd already met as a team. As a coach, that's what you want to see from your seniors."
It's never easy, particularly in cash-strapped programs such as UTC, which is far more the norm than the exception these days everywhere save Power Five FBS programs such as those in UT's Southeastern Conference.
Yet two days from his eighth season on the UTC sideline, Huesman sounded like a coach justifiably proud of the road the Mocs have traveled to become a Top 10 team.
"We feel good about what we do and how we do it," he said.
Added Leslie: "We've all been here since May. We want to make a big memory. We want to win the national championship."
Whether UTC wins that ultimate championship or not, the program Huesman and Leslie have helped build certainly feels like a championship one these days.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.