There are still a lot of questions as to exactly how the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football program — one with neither a ton of financial backing nor a ton of history when it comes to national-level success — is going to operate in the name, image and likeness era.
As the 2025 season has taken shape, though, it has become clear that finding players such as Devin Lively will certainly be a big factor.
It’s not about Lively’s ability, although the 6-foot-2, 296-pound sophomore has worked his way into the rotation on UTC’s offensive line. It’s about his mentality in the changing landscape of college athletics, when transferring is easier than ever and NIL deals and revenue sharing offer incentive for players to always be looking for what else might be out there.
Things could change — quickly in this day and age — but Lively wants to be in Chattanooga.
“At preseason camp, Coach told me I was going to have a chance to play here or a chance to play there,” Lively said in reference to UTC offensive line coach Kevin Revis. “I said, ‘Coach, I really don’t care if you’ve got me out there holding (the ball for) field goals, I just want to help the team win games.’
“That’s what I’m here to do, so it’s been pretty awesome to kind of be around guys like Ryan Merklinger, B.J. Ragland and Tyrell Ragland, they just kind of help me every day become better, and over time, I’ve just kind of worked my way into the lineup.”
Although he still splits reps with B.J. Ragland, Lively was named the starter prior to the third game of the season, the Sept. 13 matchup against Stetson at Finley Stadium. The Mocs won 63-0 that night, and it was the beginning of a stretch in which they have averaged 270.3 rushing yards per game, which leads the Southern Conference. The 445-yard performance against the Hatters that started it remains the high, but the Mocs had 293 on the ground at third-ranked Tarleton State in the nonconference finale a week later, and in last Saturday’s game at Virginia Military Institute, they rushed for 223 yards and had a nine-play, 99-yard drive that featured eight runs covering all of the yards.
“Communicating better is the biggest thing,” UTC seventh-year head coach Rusty Wright said of the offensive line’s improvement this season. “We probably had at least three or four of those guys with us in the spring compared to every other position group, so they’ve settled in with just being able to communicate with each other the right way. The backs are playing good, but the offense has done a good job of trying to manipulate some things and get people lined up where we can handle them to a certain degree, and that’s helped.
“Just being able to communicate with each other has been the biggest thing, and they seem a little more comfortable with each other.”
Lively is part of a youth movement on the line that features four rotational players — Lively, sophomore Nick Paul, redshirt sophomore Aidan Donald and redshirt freshman Watts Alexander — with less than two years of college experience. Usually that’s cause for excitement for a coach, but in the portal era, Revis can’t get too excited about future plans because it could all change in a moment’s notice.
In the most recent offseason, the Mocs lost center Reid Williams — named the nation’s best at his position in the Football Championship Subdivision in 2024 — to Football Bowl Subdivision member UNLV, while Almarion Crim moved on to South Dakota, which reached the FCS semifinals last December.
“Known since he got here he was going to be a really good player,” Revis said of Lively. “He works so hard, he practices hard, he’s made of the right stuff. His parents are really tough on him and have brought up him the right way to be a tough kid. The biggest thing with him is just growing up. A lot of it is focusing his energy where he just wants to win, wants to do it well. Sometimes we have to narrow his focus down (from being) a little bit overexcited, which is going to get there, but that’s where him splitting some time with B.J., getting to come to the sideline and see it from the sideline with the guys, rotating a little bit, helps him out a ton.
“But the kid’s going to be a really good player. He cares, he plays hard, he’s talented, he’s a good dude. He’s going to get there, same with the group, it’s like we’ve just got to get there right now — we don’t have time to wait.”
The Mocs (2-4, 1-1) are off this week before hosting rival East Tennessee State at 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 18, the start of six consecutive SoCon games to close the regular season. Despite some of the struggles over the past month-plus, Lively is optimistic about the future of the line and the team, and he thinks the Mocs are capable of putting things together in the second half of the season.
“I just want us get better every single week, and I think if we get better every single week, there’s nothing that says we can’t win them all,” he said. “We could lose them all, too, so it’s on us to get better every single day, every single week, and just put our best stuff out there every Saturday and see what happens.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.