In a sense, it’s a fitting end for Ryan Ingram.
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga running back, who joined the Mocs as a graduate transfer this season after five years at fellow Southern Conference program Wofford, will close his collegiate career in a game at Wofford, where he rushed for 2,020 yards and 19 touchdowns for the Terriers over his final four seasons with them.
Wofford offers no graduate programs, so with a year of eligibility remaining, the 5-foot-10, 231-pounder from Stone Mountain, Georgia, chose UTC for his final season. It hasn’t gone quite as hoped for, but with one game remaining, Ingram and everyone associated with the program have preached about finishing the season “the right way,” which would mean the Mocs (5-6, 4-3) playing their best and winning against the Terriers (5-6, 4-3) in Saturday’s 1:30 p.m. matchup at Gibbs Stadium in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
“This is possibly the last chance me or anybody could put these pads on and do what we’re doing, so it doesn’t really matter about the record,” said Ingram, who has 533 rushing yards and a team-high seven touchdown runs this season. “We’re just taking it week by week, preparing for another week and (wanting to) just go out there and show people what we can do.”
Trying to “show people what we can do” has taken on a completely different meaning in this day and age.
Whether the Mocs finish 6-6 or 5-7 this season only has so much meaning in an era when the NCAA transfer portal and relaxed rules on immediate eligibility make it much easier for players to change schools from one year to the next — and when revenue sharing and NIL compensation give them financial motivation to do so.
For the first time in UTC head coach Rusty Wright’s seven-year tenure, the Mocs entered the final week of the regular season completely out of the picture for the Football Championship Subdivision’s 24-team playoffs. That bracket is set to be revealed at noon Sunday on ESPNU, and two-time reigning SoCon champion Mercer (9-1, 8-0) — a 63-17 winner against UTC last weekend in Macon, Georgia — is the league’s only postseason lock via its automatic berth.
There’s no bubble talk for the Mocs, whose run to the second round of the 2023 playoffs is the program’s lone postseason appearance since three in a row from 2014-16, but there is a 12th game, and it’s still an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to play, an opportunity to win, but also an opportunity for players to put good performances on video — because everyone who intends to play in 2026 is auditioning for a roster spot, be it at UTC or elsewhere.
The Mocs lost 15 starting-caliber players to the transfer portal from their 2024 roster, but for a lot of reasons — including UTC having considerably more NIL money to work with in the upcoming offseason than the most recent one — it’s unlikely that a similar exodus will occur between now and next season.
For all those reasons, that’s why it’s so important to “finish the right way” this week — and why Wright didn’t feel the need to offer any extra motivational speeches in between a humbling road loss and a finale without postseason stakes.
“I told them earlier this week I’m not a sports psychologist. There’s a lot of them coming back,” Wright said, referring to the relative youth on the roster. “Whether they decide to come back for us or somebody else, they are what they put on tape, and at the end of the day, we’ve got to be Division I football players and we’ve got to be a Division I football program, and you’ve got to go get yourself prepared to go play as well as you can.
“If you don’t, that’s going to show. If you don’t, probably not going to show you around here anymore, and that’s not a threat, I’m not threatening anybody, but that’s what you have to go do. It’s just part of the game; everybody’s not going to win the national championship, everybody’s not going to go to a bowl game, but as a competitor and as a college football player, you better get your butt ready to play every Saturday.”
To Wright’s point, the Mocs played 18 freshmen against Mercer and five of them started, compared to 13 seniors playing and four starting. To be fair, the game was played without primary starting quarterback Camden Orth, leading rusher Justus Durant and receiver Jamarii Robinson, who is tied for the team lead with four touchdown catches. All of those guys are seniors who won’t get that one last opportunity to play, which creates chances for their younger teammates to secure a spot next season — at UTC or perhaps elsewhere.
For guys like Ingram, though, it ends Saturday. And they want to make sure it ends the right way.
“I think every week we’ve just grown closer and closer, and these are my brothers,” Ingram said. “It’s kind of sad being the last week, it just don’t even feel like it, but we’ve grown closer every week and we’ve kept our heads down and kept working.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.