The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team will be eligible for postseason play next fall, athletic director Rick Hart told the Times Free Press on Thursday.
The Mocs’ failure a year ago to meet the NCAA’s multi-year Academic Progress Rate standards resulted in the NCAA banning UTC from the 2009 FCS playoffs. Hart said the Mocs will continue to face penalties in the form of scholarship and practice time reductions, but the team will have a shot at the playoffs.
Last season, UTC was limited to 56.6 scholarships – well below the FCS maximum of 63 – and 16 hours of athletic activity per week instead of 20.
Both UTC and Jacksonville State were banned from last season’s playoffs for APR reasons – the only two Division I football programs in country to be excluded – and now both will be eligible when they meet at Jacksonville State on Sept. 11.
The Gamecocks would have earned the Ohio Valley Conference’s automatic bid had it been eligible. The Mocs went 6-5, 4-4 in the Southern Conference, for the program’s first winning season since 2005. UTC has only made the playoffs once, qualifying in 1984.
For more, read tomorrow’s Times Free Press. You can also follow John Frierson’s coverage of the Mocs at twitter.com/mocsbeat and facebook.com/mocsbeatTFP.