The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football program slayed a dragon earlier this season by winning its senior day game for the first time since 2019, defeating Stetson 63-0 on Sept. 13 amid what became a 1-4 start to the season.
Now as for home finales? That’s been a different animal — a monkey on the collective back of the Mocs.
The Mocs (4-5, 3-2 Southern Conference) host Furman (5-4, 3-3) on Saturday in the final scheduled game for the UTC football team at Finley Stadium this season, with seventh-year head coach Rusty Wright’s team traveling to Mercer (7-1, 6-0) on Nov. 15 in Macon, Georgia, and Wofford (3-6, 2-3) on Nov. 22 in Spartanburg, South Carolina, to close SoCon play and the regular season.
In a season when so much has been different for the Mocs after rebuilding their roster, the game will be played at noon and aired on the Nexstar network. Since 1998, UTC has played just six home games at noon, with two of those coming in the 2020 season that was, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, played mostly in the late winter and early spring of 2021. Take those games out, and Saturday is the first noon start for the Mocs at Finley since they beat Mercer 38-31 in 2014.
The Mocs also lost to Furman in 2007, to Furman in 1999 and to Georgia Southern in 1998 in noon kicks at home.