Rusty Wright came back to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for his second stint as a Mocs assistant coach in 2013, a time when his alma mater’s football program seemed to be on the verge of something special.
The Mocs were entering their fifth season with Russ Huesman as head coach, having gone 6-5 in three of his first four — the exception was a 5-6 mark in 2011 — and the influx of talent on the roster suggested a breakthrough year was possible.
Still, they weren’t sure about what they had. Although expectations appeared high, the Mocs started the season with a 31-21 home loss to UT Martin, a nonconference opponent but one from UTC’s level, the Football Championship Subdivision. Game two was in Atlanta against Georgia State, which was in its first season as a Football Bowl Subdivision program after three seasons as an FCS school.
The game was never close. The Mocs poured it on from the start, running for 401 yards and scoring the first 42 points on their way to a 42-14 win at the Georgia Dome, where the Panthers played their home games at the time, and any questions about the potential of that UTC team were seemingly answered that day.
“We go and play Martin, and they go up and down the field on us, and you’re like, ‘Oh God, what did we get ourselves into again?'” Wright recalled Tuesday. “I will say this: That was an older group, and some of those guys just kind of ran the ship. Going down to Atlanta and playing well, and just the thought of them being a FBS school and winning that way, our kids were like, ‘OK, we can go play.'”
This week, UTC’s opponent in game two of its 2024 season is also Georgia State, which since that 0-12 initial FBS season that included three losses to FCS teams (UTC, Samford, which won the Southern Conference, and Jacksonville State, which reached the quarterfinals of the FCS playoffs that fall) has righted itself and improved exponentially. The Panthers, who have belonged to the Sun Belt Conference throughout their FBS era, have made bowl appearances in five of the past seven seasons and opened their 2019 schedule by defeating Tennessee in Knoxville.
They’re also under new leadership. Panthers head coach Dell McGee, who had been a Georgia assistant since 2016 — throughout Kirby Smart’s tenure as head coach of the Bulldogs, including back-to-back national championship seasons in 2021-22 — was hired as the replacement for Shawn Elliott, who resigned in mid-February to take an assistant’s role at South Carolina.
McGee’s first staff has some familiar faces on it for the Mocs. Chattanooga native and former UTC assistant Will Healy is the running backs coach, and Jeremiah Wilson, who was on Tom Arth’s UTC staff in 2018 as cornerbacks coach, is the safeties coach for Georgia State, which opened it season with last Saturday’s loss at Georgia Tech
On the flipside, Wright, who was a Georgia State assistant in the 2017-18 seasons, is in his sixth year as head coach at UTC, which is coming off an opening loss at Tennessee.
In some respects, the last Mocs-Panthers meeting was a turning point for UTC, with the program mostly mired in mediocrity for much of its Division I history to that point. The Mocs would end up going 8-4 in 2013, earning a share of the SoCon championship but getting left out of the first 24-team field in FCS postseason history. However, they would make the playoffs the following three seasons while winning the SoCon title outright in 2014 and sharing it in 2015.
There are some correlations between that time and the current situation for the Mocs.
Wright had them on the doorstep of making the playoffs in 2021 and 2022 before finally getting in last fall and winning a first-round game at Austin Peay. A half-decade into Wright’s tenure, UTC needed a breakthrough season after being so close — much like the 2013 Mocs — and got it last year.
That success has been the source of much of the confidence for the 2024 Mocs, who returned a lot from last year and haven’t wavered in their belief in themselves despite last Saturday’s 69-3 humbling at Neyland Stadium.
“You see a massive amount of growth from week one to week two,” UTC defensive back Reuben Lowery III said. “I do enjoy the way our team reacted, even on Saturday and going throughout our process this week and preparing, so I feel like our confidence is high going into the game, which we love not because of the opponent we’re facing but because of the preparation that we know we will put in and what we’re trying to prove to ourselves.”
The next game for the current UTC team is Saturday’s 7 p.m. matchup with Georgia State at Atlanta’s Center Parc Stadium.
The next step for the current UTC program, though, is a SoCon championship — and the preseason favorites are locked in on doing what it takes to bring a title back to Chattanooga for the first time since 2015.
“It all starts with Coach Wright changing the program around and leading us in the right direction,” junior receiver Sam Phillips said, “and then recruiting guys like (quarterback) Chase (Artopoeus), Nunu (receiver Javin Whatley), me, (tight end) Jay (Gibson). It’s people like that that are going to lead the team in the right direction, because championship teams are led by those players.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.