When your dad is an assistant coach at a school such as Auburn or Clemson, as former University of Tennessee at Chattanooga head coach Rodney Allison was when son Sloan was a boy, you get to see and experience things the average fan doesn’t.
Sloan, a junior receiver and kick-holder for UTC who has three receptions this season – all for touchdowns – returns this weekend to Auburn’s Jordan-Hare Stadium for the first time since 1998. The Mocs (5-3) play Saturday against the Tigers (9-0), who are ranked No. 2 in the Football Bowl Subdivision coaches’ poll.
The Allisons lived in Auburn from 1993 to ’98, and the only place Sloan has called home longer is Chattanooga.
While there, he said, he always tried to have his birthday party at Jordan-Hare.
He remembers his 10th birthday party very well. It was on the day – Oct. 23, 1998 – when Terry Bowden resigned as Auburn’s head coach. Bowden resigned on a Friday, a day before the Tigers hosted Louisiana Tech.
“We’d always play football, and I remember my dad coming out about 25 minutes into it, I guess, and pulling me aside,” Sloan said. “He was in a blazer and tie and slacks, and he never dressed that way, so I kind of knew something was up.”
When she saw Rodney arrive, Sloan’s mom Leigh thought he was there to sing “Happy Birthday” and cut the cake, not inform her that a life-changing news conference was about to happen.
“I said, ‘Kids, come sing fast!” Leigh said.
Rodney was Auburn’s offensive coordinator that season, and Sloan said his first reaction when his dad told him the news was “that he was going to get the head coaching job.”
Instead, the defensive coordinator, former UTC head coach Bill Oliver, was named the interim coach.
Rodney, a close friend of Terry and the rest of the Bowden family, chose to remain on the staff but was stripped of his coordinator title, which went to Jimbo Fisher, now the head coach at Florida State.
“Then [Oliver] got rid of me the next week,” said Rodney, UTC’s coach from 2003 to ’08.
Rodney and Leigh, who now live in Lubbock, Texas, will be at Saturday’s game. That also will be their first trip back to Jordan-Hare.
For Sloan, that 1998 season was an early lesson in the pressures and uncertainty that comes with being a college football coach.
“He got to see it up front, and he was at an age where he understood it, too,” said Rodney, who works for an auto group in Lubbock but said he’s considering getting back into coaching.
Rodney was Auburn’s running backs coach in 1995, the last time Auburn and UTC met. The Tigers routed UTC 76-10 that day. Sloan said he can’t recall if he got to join in the post-win celebration in the locker room.
“If it was a loss, the kids weren’t allowed in the locker room,” he said. “But if we won we always got to go in there. It was a great scene in there after wins.”
Saturday, Sloan and the Mocs hope to pull off a massive upset and be the ones celebrating, adding new fond memories for the place he once called home.
Extra points
Backup cornerback Chaz Moore (concussion) practiced Thursday and will be available Saturday. Linebacker Gunner Miller (shoulder) and defensive tackle Nick Davison (concussion) are out. … J.J. Jackson will start at running back.