As a kid I was introduced to Tennessee football and Chattanooga basketball by my Dad. We had season tickets for both, plus tickets to the Vols game in Birmingham every year.
The head coach of Chattanooga football this year is Rusty Wright. He’s an alum of the school and played TE here during his playing days. This is his first HC gig. He spent the last 2 years as the ILB coach, ST coordinator, and recruiting coordinator for Sean Elliott at Georgia State. Yes, that Sean Elliott and that Georgia State.  In 2017, his first year at GSU, the panthers went bowling at Camping World Stadium in Orlando (same field as Miami vs UF game this year) and beat WKU 27-17.
In Rusty’s first game at the helm for the Mocs he scored a victory over Eastern Illinois, 24-10, even though his QB threw 2 interceptions and his team was penalized 11 times for 119 yards. They lost time of possession by almost 10 minutes, 34:19 to 25:41. They only had 14 first downs while allowing 23 for EIU. He didn’t need a single one of those excuses because they didn’t matter. He won the game.
In 10 days Rusty will be bringing his Moccasins to Rocky Top but this Saturday he’s taking his team on the road to face Jacksonville State, a team which lost its season opener on the road last week to Southeastern Louisiana, 14-35. The Mocs could be on a roll. I have to tell you guys, and I know this probably is not going to be well received, my Dad took me to almost every home basketball game that UTC had. I’ve traveled to watch them in tournament play, including to face Louisville at Louisville. On Wednesday nights my Dad and I would slip out of Church early just to make it to the arena here to catch as much of the game as we could. It was that important.
While I expect the score of their game with us to be similar to our game with ETSU last year, if by some stroke of heaven Rusty’s boys pull this off, there’s a lot of people around me, family and friends, who are going to want to go to the party.
WTH am I going to do?
It would be sort of like an Archie Manning moment. I guess I could go to the party and wear my Ty Chandler jersey. Of course it would be my luck that Ty fumbled the ball on the most critical play of the game which handed victory to the Mocs. I’ll try to make sure if the unthinkable happens and I do end up at a party like that, I’ll orchestrate it so that it will be impossible for me to have any fun. I hope you guys will try to be understanding of my predicament. The best thing anyone could do to help me out is to do whatever you can to make damn sure we don’t lose to Chattanooga.