UTC happy in SoCon, but college football upheaval could change things

Staff photo by Robin Rudd / The Citadel quarterback Brandon Rainey is tackled by a crowd of UTC defenders during a Southern Conference game in November 2019 at Finley Stadium. As changes occur at the highest levels of college football, it could have a trickle-down effect on UTC and the SoCon.
Staff photo by Robin Rudd / The Citadel quarterback Brandon Rainey is tackled by a crowd of UTC defenders during a Southern Conference game in November 2019 at Finley Stadium. As changes occur at the highest levels of college football, it could have a trickle-down effect on UTC and the SoCon.

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga was not in a position to move during the most recent period of major conference realignment in college football, a stretch that consumed the majority of the first half of the past decade.

In early 2013, the Sun Belt expressed interest in UTC, a move that would have shifted the Mocs from the Southern Conference and NCAA Division I's Football Championship Subdivision to its Football Bowl Subdivision. At the same time, though, the university was looking for a president, an athletic director and a head coach for each of its basketball programs.

Fast-forward to 2021 and what seems to be another period of big changes being kicked off by the FBS conferences popularly referred to as the Power Five, which make up the very highest level of college football.

In late July, Big 12 programs Oklahoma and Texas were accepted for future membership in the Southeastern Conference, a move that will happen no later than 2025. This past Tuesday, the Atlantic Coast Conference, the Big Ten and the Pac-12 announced an alliance, a countermove with few details for now but clearly intended to help those leagues avoid losing members.

Changes in the Power Five could be accompanied by changes in the other FBS leagues - the American Athletic Conference, Conference USA, Mid-American Conference, Mountain West and Sun Belt, which are referred to as the Group of Five - as well as the FCS. That was the case during realignment from 2010 to 2014.

So with it probable, if not likely, that teams will be on the move again in the upcoming years, how could that affect UTC this time around? And will the Mocs be ready?

Like in 2013, there is already interest from other leagues - mainly the newly remodeled ASUN (formerly the Atlantic Sun), according to multiple sources - but no rush for UTC to make a decision. While football will lead the way in conversations about such changes, other sports - such as men's basketball, where the SoCon was the ninth-best league in the country in 2020-21, according to the Rating Percentage Index rankings - will be taken into consideration.

It's part of the reason UTC currently has little interest in joining the ASUN.

photo Staff file photo / UTC athletic director Mark Wharton is keeping his focus inward even as the Mocs begin to consider the possibility of how changes in college athletics, particularly conference realignment, might affect them in the future.

Never say never

Here's an analogy: A person in a relationship, while happy, decides there could be a day when it's time to move on. The person starts working out and attempting to become more presentable - just in case.

That's not quite what UTC athletic director Mark Wharton said in his introductory news conference four years ago this past week, but the point stands: The Mocs have to take care of their own house before they're ready to make any moves.

"We need to be good where we are, and we're there," Wharton said this past week. "We do have some sports that need to come up, but that's the first step. Really, looking at the next situation, I think that the four-year process to get where we are, we have options. We're in a position of power and have choices."

What would make the city and university an attractive option?

According to Nielsen, Chattanooga is the 88th-largest media market in the country - wedged in between Syracuse, New York, and Charleston, South Carolina. It's also the second-largest media market in the SoCon behind Birmingham, Alabama, a metro area that's home to Samford University. Unlike UTC, Samford is a private institution and has to deal with a public school (the University of Alabama at Birmingham, a C-USA member) in its own market.

UTC also has a quality football program with a top-20 preseason national ranking in the FCS, a men's basketball program that will be one of the favorites in the SoCon this winter and a storied women's basketball program that won a share of the conference's regular-season title during the 2019-20 season. In addition, the Mocs have won dozens of conference championships in wrestling over the decades, and two years ago the softball team won the league tournament for the 14th time.

With college football at the highest level - primarily in the South - becoming more and more about administrators making money decisions (see Oklahoma and Texas), games for teams not associated with the bigger leagues may become harder to find, which could lead to some tough decisions to make for Group of Five teams.

What happens to the FBS if the Power Five programs detach altogether? (Not an impossible idea considering the NCAA is set to overhaul its constitution.) What happens if the top conferences poach from a Group of Five league, such as the American Athletic Conference? Where would the AAC turn?

Better question: What if the SoCon becomes proactive and decides to expand? Could it grab FBS schools such as Charlotte, Middle Tennessee State, Coastal Carolina, Appalachian State, Western Kentucky and Georgia State? What about FCS power Jacksonville State from Alabama, or one of the many other Ohio Valley Conference schools in the state of Tennessee?

photo Staff photo by Matt Hamilton / UTC football coach Rusty Wright watches practice on Aug. 4 at Scrappy Moore Field. Wright said UTC is "in a really good spot" as another phase of conference realignment seems to be kicking off for college football.

Big decisions

The College Football Playoff, which debuted in the 2014 season, is tracking toward expansion from four teams to 12. The CFP offers the entire FBS the chance to compete for a national championship - at least ostensibly; no Group of Five team has ever made the four-team field, with independent power Notre Dame the lone team outside a Power Five conference that has done so.

Expansion of the CFP field could change things, but for now Group of Five football has become little more than hopes and dreams.

Hopes that you can win all of your games for the right to get left out of the national championship conversation. Dreams that you win enough to go to a bowl game, where you'll most likely lose money for the travel but hope the financial hit is worth the exposure your program gains. That could provide a bump in recruiting and even lead to your team being talked about more - but ultimately being left out of the national championship conversation the following season. Again.

Maybe some of those teams would prefer to go back to a more inclusive playoff format, such as the one the FCS employs with its 24-team bracket that rewards conference champions and awards at-large berths. Could a true opportunity to compete for a championship be an attractive enough lure?

Regardless of where a team currently is, the possibility of change must be considered.

"You'll have to figure out what level you're going to play at and how you're going to do it," UTC football coach Rusty Wright said. "I think we're in a really good spot, because we've not tried to make that jump to a higher level, then try to keep up at that level and struggle at that level. I think we're in a pretty good spot at the level we're at, and we've just got to figure out do we stay here, or do we need to go somewhere else, or what the next step is.

"You've got to let all that dust settle before you figure all those things out, and I think in the next year or two, we'll have an idea."

In some cases, realignment is like the NCAA transfer portal - you don't really know what your worth is until you're there. So a school like UTC won't really know what the options are until things start to shake out, but that's also why the Mocs aren't stressing or rushing such decisions.

"It's an extremely exciting time," Wharton said. "We've talked about where we were four years ago, and where we are now, elevating some programs in that time, and my phone rings with questions about what we're going to do. And as I've said, we're in a situation, in a position that we're one of the strongest teams in the Southern Conference, and that's where we need to be to be able to have these conversations and look at how we fit in a line with either going up or expansion of the SoCon.

"We've just got to take care of business on the field and continue to recruit student-athletes who behave and are high-academic guys and ladies, so I think we're in a great position to be able to look at the next two to three years of where this university goes.

"But just to reiterate, we're committed to the Southern Conference."

Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @genehenley3.

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