Mocs Football Picked to be Best in SoCon in 2021

It was a bit of a weird 2020 football season for the Southern Conference as a whole, actually, check that, it was a really weird 2020 football season for the Mocs and the SoCon in general. The league is coming off a year in which the fall season was postponed after one game played until the spring where we saw an odd spring season. UTC’s head coach Rusty Wright was very clear on his stance regarding a spring season, he wasn’t a fan. The team played four games, after three games and three wins the team found themselves ranked in the top 25 in the country of FCS schools and then in the fourth game they decided to sit just about all of their star players and lost to Mercer at home.

After the Mercer game, it was curtains for the spring season as coach Wright and the team opted out for the remainder of their spring schedule.

Now, coming into the 2021 fall season the Mocs are returning a lot of the same players who helped them to a top 25 ranking in that weird 2020-2021 season.

On Monday, the coaches in the league, as well as the media that covers the SoCon, voted on where they believed every team would finish this coming season. Chattanooga received four of a possible eight first-place votes from coaches in the league according to a press release from the University. As far as the media is concerned UTC lead the way as well with 18 of a possible 30 first-place votes.

When Wright was asked about his team being picked to finish first in the league he said, “Last time I checked, they don’t give out trophies in July. We are excited about this team. It has the potential to be special, but there’s a lot of work to do to get there. That comes in practice and is applied each Saturday in the fall. I’d certainly rather talk about being first in November when is all said and done. This group can make that a reality.”

Coach Wright is absolutely correct in what he said there, it is nice to be picked to finish first but there’s still a lot of work to be done and now this team is going to have a bit of a target on their back as every team is going to be gunning to prove that they’re the best in the league.

The Mocs have won the Southern Conference seven times and will look to make it eight this coming season.

Here’s how the voting broke down:

2021 Preseason Southern Conference Coaches Poll

2021 Preseason Southern Conference Media Poll

These results were obtained via a press release from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

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