It was already going to take a special effort by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team to go into Champaign, Illinois, and pull off an upset on prime-time television against a Big Ten opponent that had more than a week’s rest.
But the Mocs, despite entering Thursday’s game undefeated and ranked in the top 10 in the Football Championship Subdivision, didn’t do much to help themselves against Illinois. Missed assignments on both sides of the ball played a big hand in the 31-0 defeat for UTC (3-1), which was shut out for the first time since losing 45-0 at Tennessee in 2019.
An FCS team losing when it faces a Football Bowl Subdivision program — which has 22 more scholarships by comparison, among other advantages — isn’t really surprising. The Fighting Illini (3-1) paid the Mocs $485,000 to play the game for a reason.
What might have surprised some observers is how the Mocs played, or more specifically, how badly they played.
The offensive line and the secondary were areas of concern entering the season, and Thursday they showed why. The bigger Illini defense got to quarterback Preston Hutchinson at will, sacking the senior four times and hurrying him eight others, and he was intercepted twice, doubling the number he’d totaled in the first three games. And when Cole Copeland entered in relief, he got hit the one time he dropped back to pass.