For a couple of months last fall, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football coach Tom Arth looked like a guy who found it much easier to win a news conference than a football game.
Not that anyone except the players and coaches necessarily expected the 2017 Mocs to return to the playoffs for a fourth straight season. From the beginning, there were questions about the offensive line, running backs and overall depth. There were clearly reasons why UTC was voted fourth in the Southern Conference in the preseason, and most of those had nothing to do with Arth's reputation as a coach, which was sparkling.
But as injuries took their toll and losses mounted on the field, there were more than a few whispers among the team's most fervent supporters that bringing a coach from a nonscholarship, NCAA Division III program such as John Carroll - impressive though the Blue Streaks had been under Arth's watch - possibly was a mistake.
Tom Arth is in his first year as UTC's head coach. The University of Chattanooga Mocs met the Jacksonville State Gamecocks in the Guardian Credit Union FCS Kickoff at the Carmton Bowl in Montgomery, Alabama on August 26, 2017.Just maybe, the grumblers groused, this had been too big a jump for a guy who had never coached at UTC's Division I Football Championship Subdivision level, especially since he had never previously coached in the Southeast.
And that final 3-8 record was understandably frustrating for all concerned. Former Mocs coach Russ Huesman had dramatically changed the culture at his alma mater before leaving to coach the Richmond Spiders. Having not once reached the playoffs since 1984, the Mocs now were expected to participate in the postseason, and to win at least one game after they got there.
But Huesman also didn't lose his potential all-star quarterback before the season began, with gifted senior passer Alejandro Bennifield erased by an NCAA suspension and then an injury. Huesman wasn't attempting to replace an ultra-successful coach and revamp a system that had known success.
So what perhaps should have been embraced by Moc Maniacs the region over wasn't the 3-8 overall mark against a brutal schedule but the final three games, which included a victory at No. 9 Samford, a two-overtime loss at No. 8 Wofford and a victory over East Tennessee State to close out the year.
Because judging by the recruiting class Arth and his staff completed Wednesday, that's what these 24 newest Mocs and their families were focusing on.
But it's what Arth said about the school's approach to recruiting that should most please both UTC's boosters and its alums and faculty in general about the program.
"As exciting as it is, it also brings great responsibility," Arth said of this class, which includes 10 players with academic honors, tying the most ever in any Mocs football recruiting class. "Those individual student-athletes and their families are counting on us to help them become the best people, students and football players they can be. That's a responsibility we don't take lightly."
It's all talk for now. Twenty-one of these 24 young men have yet to crack open a textbook, spend a night as a student on UTC's campus, be forced to make a split-second decision whether to make the wrong or right choice when placed in a compromising situation.
But to listen to Arth and study the bios on these players - including six from the Chattanooga area - is to believe he takes his own words to heart.
"Better people," he likes to say, "make better Mocs."
It sounds so simple that you wonder why everyone doesn't do it. Wouldn't any coach's life be simpler without worrying over his players' academics, or off-field behavior? Shouldn't we all demand such discipline and tough love from all those who influence young people?
"You start out evaluating film," he said of his staff's recruiting formula. "Then you talk to everyone you can about the player's character, because in the end it's all about their character. So you talk to everyone from the woman at the (high school's) front desk to the janitor. Then you look at their academics, talk to their teachers. We've crossed some really talented kids off our lists because of academics or character issues."
The entire sports world needs better character, whether it be coaches, support staff, players, even fans. It needs to view itself and discipline itself in a way that makes it part of the solution rather than a symptom of the problem.
Not that fans care about any of that on national signing day. They don't want to hear that Big State U. didn't sign so much as a single three-star player but it did ink 19 valedictorians doubling as Eagle Scouts. Unless, of course, some matrix tied national championships to the number of valedictorians and Eagle Scouts on your roster.
So across the Big Boy South, where fans of Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee long ago became addicted to these signing days, it's fun to wonder if Georgia coach Kirby Smart wasn't the real brains behind all those No. 1 Bama recruiting classes rather than Crimson Tide head coach Nick Saban, since Smart just pulled in what some consider one of the greatest classes ever.
New UT coach Jeremy Pruitt's ability to ward off Saban for linebacker J.J. Peterson also strongly hints of better days for the Big Orange.
But the following words from Arth - if they're proven true five years from now - should make UTC fans as proud as any football fanatics from Georgia, Bama or Tennessee. Said the Mocs boss: "You look at this class and we have certainly improved the roster, but more importantly to me, we improved our program and improved our campus."
Whether anyone will admit it, that's what should be the definition of a winning program.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.