Wednesday afternoon, as the three-day early signing period for NCAA Division I football teams began, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga head coach Rusty Wright spoke with an understanding of where his program stands.
He’s always known, actually: UTC, playing in D-I’s lower-tier Football Championship Subdivision level, is a developmental program.
The type of development that Wright spoke of, though, was about finding diamonds in the rough and developing them into productive players — with the examples including former UTC standouts Keionta Davis and Davis Tull, who became All-Americans and Southern Conference defensive players of the year during their time with the Mocs. Those guys also suffered injuries in their final years of high school, which stunted their recruitment and led in part to them landing at UTC, where they churned out amazing careers and earned NFL opportunities.
On the other hand, “development” has another meaning these days, too.
FCS coaches — at least those not farther west, where the level’s strongest programs and conferences lie — have a hard time holding on to elite talent because of the transfer portal and the allure of playing for programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision and for those with more to offer in the way of NIL compensation or revenue sharing, as permitted by the House v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit settlement that became final ahead of the current school year.