Marquise Freeman left Washington State after the 2021 football season, and on his way back home to Cocoa, Florida, the former three-star prospect decided to visit the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Freeman, who had spent two years in Pullman without playing for the Football Bowl Subdivision’s Cougars, still had all four seasons of eligibility remaining, owing to the NCAA’s blanket waiver for the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and a redshirt in 2021. The 6-foot-3, 215-pound defensive end was looking for a fresh start, but he also needed the right spot.
UTC head coach Rusty Wright and defensive ends coach Tyrus Ward got Freeman on campus, imploring him to transfer and join the Mocs, who were coming off a 6-5 season that ended with back-to-back losses that knocked them out of the Southern Conference title hunt and then the race for an at-large berth in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs.
“He wasn’t sure what he was going to do,” Wright recalled, “and I told him, ‘You go home, you’ve got nothing there. You’re done. You go back to Florida, you ain’t going anywhere else, you’re done.'”
And even at UTC, nothing was promised to Freeman. Look at the team’s depth chart for his position, and he was behind two-time All-American Jay Person and three-time All-SoCon selection Ben Brewton in the 2022 and 2023 seasons. Last year he was in a rotation with Joseph Bakhole, Leroy Harris and Chris Victor, who all left for FBS programs after the season.