It was near the end of a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football practice in August, and the Mocs were doing a conditioning drill to conclude their workout.
Nick Paul was winning every sprint for the linemen, prompting coach Kevin Revis to yell: “That’s why he’s going to play every play!”
Earlier this week, UTC seventh-year head coach Rusty Wright said of the sophomore offensive lineman: “Being good is important to him.”
And for Paul, it’s easy to be invested when he remember his journey to this destination.
He remembers the late nights during his last couple of years of high school at Clarke Central in Athens, Georgia, sending his game highlights out and attempting to make contact with numerous college coaches through Twitter in hopes of generating recruiting interest. The footage Revis saw of Paul’s junior season wasn’t great, which slowed his recruiting, but when the UTC coaching staff looked at clips of him as a senior, they saw something different on the video.
They saw vast improvement, and if he could continue that growth, they saw a guy who could be a really good player.
So they took a chance of sorts, and Paul has proven them right. He played in eight games as a freshman in 2024, and the 6-foot-2, 315-pounder has been entrenched in the starting lineup this season for the Mocs (1-3), who start Southern Conference play when The Citadel (1-3, 1-1) visits Finley Stadium at 6 p.m. Saturday.
“When I see that,” Revis said of Paul’s jump from his junior to senior season of prep football, “it kind of tells me a little bit of what they’re going to do when they get here, and that’s what he’s done. He was well-coached there (in high school), he was just a late bloomer, and some people want to have their whole class committed really early, and that’s why with offensive linemen we’re sometimes a little slower (in recruiting).
“I want the kids who are still getting better, and that kid is as dependable as it gets. I’ve not had many true freshmen that have played for me in my career, and the kid played almost 200 snaps last year, and he just continues to get better and better. He plays and practices so hard. He’s just a tough, hard kid. Mentally, physically tough. His mom (Fallon Locher) is very tough, and he’s really close with his family. Love that kid; I’m glad we got him, because he’s a heck of a player and he is only going to get better.”
Paul’s entire UTC career has essentially been baptism by fire. The eight games and all those snaps from his freshman season, and of course the four-game gauntlet to begin the 2025 campaign, which included road losses to Football Bowl Subdivision member Memphis and fellow Football Championship Subdivision programs Tennessee Tech and Tarleton State, both of them currently ranked among the top 12 in the country.
It was in the season opener at Memphis that Paul felt like he temporarily lost that spark due to what he considered a less-than-stellar performance. He went back to his high school video — the same highlights that he’d spent so much time staring at and sending out — just to remind himself that he is in fact, a good player.
“Those first four games were tough, but they taught us that we just have to play,” Paul said. “We’ve got to play our football and not think a lot, and just be confident in things and play for each other. I know because a lot of people like to go for individual stats and they’re not focused on just being together. I think (it’s about) being together, playing with confidence and trusting our guys, trusting each other.”
To his point, after struggling to move the ball on the ground in the first two games, UTC has rushed for 737 yards on 92 carries in the past two. Sure, one of those was a 63-0 win against Stetson, an FCS program from the nonscholarship Pioneer Football League, but last week the Mocs had 292 yards on 37 carries at Tarleton State, which had allowed 289 rushing yards combined against its three previous FCS opponents and 280 yards on 66 carries against FBS member Army, a game the Texans won 30-27 in double overtime.
Paul kept working on the field and to get his name out there, believing he deserved a chance to play college football at a certain level. One of those Twitter messages found its way to UTC, and the rest has been history that’s still in the making.
“I just thank God for it, because some days I would get down on myself because I wasn’t getting noticed,” he said. “But then it was trusting the process, and then it is my way. It’s just staying humble, just working.”
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com.