Bo Spearman was patient.
In a time when transferring from one school to another has become routine in college football, the 6-foot-1, 226-pound linebacker remained at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga even when players in similar situations might have decided to move on.
After all, Spearman is now in his fourth season at UTC — he signed in February 2020, which means the Mocs’ first season with him on the roster was mostly held in spring 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic — but played only sporadically over the first three seasons. During that time, he was rooted behind the starting linebacker duo of Ty Boeck and Kam Jones.
“I got to learn from two great guys,” Spearman said, noting he also had the opportunity to go against UTC offensive linemen McClendon Curtis and Cole Strange, both of them All-Americans, every day in practice as a member of the scout team. “There were just so many opportunities to get better.”
Now both Boeck and Jones are gone, and the junior’s patience, work and talent allowed him to move into the starting lineup at linebacker alongside sophomore Alex Mitchell for last week’s season opener at North Alabama. Spearman had started before — last October against Virginia Military Institute — but this was different because he was taking the role over for the long haul.
How did he respond? He lost some of that patience he’d previously exercised, and the Mocs need that back.
Spearman finished with five tackles and a fumble recovery in the 41-27 loss, but it wasn’t always pretty. Fifth-year UTC coach Rusty Wright and defensive coordinator Lorenzo Ward pointed to a couple of missed assignments — a blitz here, a missed coverage there — that in the moment hurt the Mocs and helped the Lions sprint out to a 21-0 advantage.
It wasn’t just him, though. The defense struggled as a whole, and the result was the second-most yards allowed (517) under Wright, with only a 532-yard performance by James Madison in 2019 topping that number. The 41 points allowed were the most since the Mocs allowed more than 40 in back-to-back losses to Jacksonville State (41) and Tennessee (45), also in 2019.
“We just have to let Bo know that it’s OK to be excited. It’s OK to have that emotion, but we’ve still got to have that focus to get the job done and keep him aware of the task at hand,” sixth-year senior edge rusher Ben Brewton said. “The crowd, the atmosphere, everything can get to you, but just trying to keep the guys focused and trying to keep him knowing that we have a task to handle.”
Wright did note that inexperience probably played more of a factor for Spearman. He was also playing just a couple hours away from his hometown of Irondale, near Birmingham. For so many reasons, Spearman wanted to make an impact.
“He’s just got to go play,” Wright said. “The more he plays, the better he’ll be, and that’s the thing about it. There were things he did Saturday that he hadn’t been doing, and he has to do those things when the lights are on, and he will. He was just too excited to calm down and play. I went up to him before the game and I told him to go play — ‘You’ve been doing this your whole life, you’ve heard the same call since day one, since you’ve been here, just go out there and execute’ — but kids are going to do things like that. He has to learn from it and grow from it and fix it, and I think he’ll take it to heart to fix it.”
Wright has reason to be confident in Spearman’s ability to fix his mistakes. After all, football runs in his blood with a pair of uncles who played in college and the NFL, including one — Marion Hobby, a three-year starter at the University of Tennessee and a member of the Volunteers’ 100th anniversary team — who is currently the defensive line coach of the Cincinnati Bengals.
Adversity is just the name of the game in the sport, and Spearman has no doubt he and the Mocs will figure things out.
“We learned about how to deal when stuff isn’t going your way,” Spearman said. “We’re going to get there, but it’s going to take a lot of commitment, a lot of trust in each other, and a lot of trust in our coaches and being in the right spot, doing our job.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.