Freshly moved in at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in the summer of 2017, Devonnsha Maxwell was ready to sit down and play some video games.
But there was a problem: He didn't have the school's Wi-Fi code and needed that to be able to play online. He saw a door open in the apartment, with one of his new roommates already sitting down and playing games himself.
Maxwell knew nothing about the 6-foot-8, 350-plus-pound guy who "filled the whole door" but assumed at that size he had to be an upperclassman. Therefore, he had to have the code.
"I just saw this big guy with a beard and asked him, 'You know how to work the Wi-Fi?" Maxwell said earlier this week. "He said, 'Man, I just got here like you.'
"I must have looked at him up and down and finally just said, 'Nevermind, don't worry about it.'"
That guy? His new UTC football teammate McClendon Curtis, who like Maxwell was an incoming freshman.
The irony? Curtis is four months younger than Maxwell.
"I told him he was older than me," Curtis said earlier this week. "I'm just looking at this guy's big old jeans and assuming he was a transfer."
A bond formed from there, and it has lasted.
UTC had 15 players take part in senior day activities in conjunction with last Saturday's scheduled home finale against Samford. Like other college football programs around the country, fifth-year and even sixth-year seniors are not unheard of at UTC with the NCAA granting an extra season of eligibility amid the coronavirus pandemic.
But only two of those 15 Mocs honored last Saturday have been at UTC since 2017: Chattanooga native Curtis, an offensive lineman from Central High School, and Maxwell, a 6-3, 296-pound defensive lineman from Valdosta, Georgia.
Staff photo by Matt Hamilton / UTC's Devonnsha Maxwell stretches for Samford quarterback Michael Hiers during a SoCon game last Saturday at Finley Stadium.They redshirted as freshmen that first year but have been lineup staples in multiple seasons since. Maxwell was a Freshman All-American in 2018 and received sophomore recognition a year later; he has been an All-Southern Conference selection the past three seasons and was the SoCon defensive player of the year in 2021. The Mocs (7-3, 5-2) close their regular season at 1 p.m. Saturday at Western Carolina (5-5, 3-4), and Maxwell enters the matchup one sack away from breaking the career record for both UTC and the SoCon currently held by Davis Tull (37).
The ascension of Curtis has been more gradual, but he made the All-SoCon first team the past two seasons and is a budding NFL prospect. Earlier this week, UTC announced he had accepted an invitation to the prestigious Reese's Senior Bowl on Feb. 4 in Mobile, Alabama.
And while Curtis and Maxwell were both in-game contributors in 2018, Tom Arth's second and final season as coach, when Rusty Wright returned to his alma mater to lead the Mocs, he decided both could be better. So the new head coach put the two big linemen up against each other in practice drills.
Iron sharpens iron, right?
"We figured that's the only way they're going to get better, so we were pushing them and encouraging them to practice better so they could go play better," Wright said. "It took a minute for them to understand that's got to happen for you to play at a certain level, but to watch them grow against each other has been awesome, because they are probably two of the best I've been around as far as trying to take things and make themselves better."
It hasn't always been easy. Along with the head coaching change, there has been constant upheaval at their position groups: Maxwell has had seven defensive line coaches, while Curtis has worked under four offensive line coaches and went through a spring season when the offensive line was its own coach. That's because Curtis' second offensive line coach, Chris Malone, had to resign in January 2021 after making a racially charged tweet.
Curtis graduated with a degree in sport management in 2021, when Maxwell graduated with a degree in psychology. Both were contacted by bigger schools this past offseason in hopes of poaching one or both away, but the pair chose to return to UTC for a final season and help the program try to take the next step, which would be receiving a Football Championship Subdivision playoff bid for the first time since 2016. Ahead of the season, they were named team captains, along with fifth-year senior linebacker Ty Boeck and fourth-year junior running back Ailym Ford.
What's next for Curtis and Maxwell? In both cases, they hope the answer is an opportunity to play professionally.
What's forever? The bond between the "old-looking dude" and the "guy with the big jeans."
"I've enjoyed the ride with D-Max," Curtis said. "I know we both had opportunities to go somewhere else, but it was just the opportunity for me and him to be able to lead this group, and I think we enjoy it. D-Max isn't as vocal as I am, but he's got more vocal this year, so I've enjoyed these last six years with my boy."
Added Maxwell: "They say you meet people who are lifelong friends in college, and McClendon is one of those guys. We were roommates until we moved off campus. We'd go places and it was me and him, so it's just one of my best friends on the team and somebody I look forward to having a relationship with for the rest of my life."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.
Updated at 3:15 p.m. on Nov. 18, 2022, to correct Ailym Ford's position from linebacker to running back.