UTC Mocs logoScott Cooper has pretty much spent his entire life following the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Mocs.
“I sat on my parents’ laps at Big Mac,” he said, referring to the basketball teams’ former home before McKenzie Arena opened in 1982. “So I’ve been a fan forever.”
But when it came to this past week’s news that UTC had rebuffed an overture from the Sun Belt Conference earlier this year — at least in part because the school had no chancellor at the time and still has no athletic director — Cooper began to contemplate the Mocs’ athletic future.
Is the Southern Conference really the best league for UTC to call home? What about the Ohio Valley Conference, which offers geographical rivalries — Tennessee Tech, UT-Martin, Austin Peay, Tennessee State — far closer to the Scenic City than almost any other SoCon campus?
For that matter, despite having not reached the FCS playoffs since 1984, what about a future move to a true mid-major such as the Sun Belt, which technically plays FBS football with the big boys (though how much longer that lasts is open to debate)?