Sam Phillips received an opportunity to walk-on to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team back in 2021. From the moment he arrived, the former Cartersville standout receiver impressed with his route-running and overall skill set, and a year later was named to the Southern Conference All-Freshman team and was a Third-Team Freshman All-American.
Phillips is just one example of a player getting overlooked and under-recruited and having to make his own way athletically in college. Because of scholarship limits — Football Championship Subdivision schools are only allotted 63 full scholarships — walk-ons aren’t uncommon at UTC, with over 25 players on this season’s roster alone filling that bill.
Another 85-plus are receiving some form of athletic aid, full or partial, which means sometimes a player just has to take a chance on his ability to perform — and impress — enough to pay off in a scholarship.
“I feel like being a walk-on definitely taught me a lot of life skills, not only with just football, but in life and helping me with things I might do later on,” said Phillips, who is now on scholarship at UTC. “You can’t just be hungry, you’ve got to be starving. It’s not made for everybody because the odds are stacked against you, especially with me being the smallest person on the team, the most undersized person out there on the field at all times.
“You’ve got to compete against everybody out there on the field and prove that you are the one.”