The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team lost four offensive lineman who started at least six games during the 2021 season, so when it came to recruiting that winter, the Mocs were definitely in need of players at that position.
As it turns out, one of those recruits needed the Mocs even more.
After three years at Purdue, Dave Monnot III put his name in the NCAA transfer portal on Dec. 31, 2021. UTC was one of the first schools that reached out to him, with a visit set for January, but on Feb. 6, 2022, his father Dave died. A former Ohio State offensive lineman and a longtime assistant at Joliet (Illinois) Catholic Academy — Dave III’s high school alma mater — he was 50 years old.
Dave III fell into a bad place. He wasn’t in school at the time, opting to work in a warehouse to make money, and football wasn’t in the forefront of his mind, but UTC was persistent. Tommy Galt, who was UTC’s offensive line coach at the time, and head coach Rusty Wright kept reaching out to him and checking on him, and when Kevin Revis took over as offensive line coach in March 2022, he kept up the process for the Mocs.
Or, as Monnot said recently, “they actually cared about who you are. They cared, they want to see you get better, and I love that.