To say the 2025 season to date has been a journey for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football program would be an understatement.
The Mocs have been beaten — plenty. They’ve been injured — a lot. They’ve been forced to adapt — often.
Seventh-year head coach Rusty Wright and his staff have taken chances on people nobody else was willing to take chances on, a matter of necessity for a program forced into rapid transition since a 2024 season that ended with UTC just short of what would have been a second straight appearance in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs.
Every playmaker, every difference maker, basically every contributor to the successes of UTC teams of the recent past is gone. So there were lumps to be taken early on, especially against a nonconference schedule that included two FCS teams currently ranked among the top 10 nationally, as well as Football Bowl Subdivision member Memphis, which was No. 25 in this week’s Associated Press poll and undefeated before being upset Saturday by the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Through it all, Wright has remained consistent that he believes in this group, and that belief was rewarded in the Mocs’ improbable 42-38 win over Southern Conference rival East Tennessee State University on Saturday afternoon at Finley Stadium, where UTC trailed 38-21 with 10:17 to play.