Patience is key for UTC fans

Most of our community knows what it wants to happen at 3 p.m. Saturday inside Finley Stadium. It wants the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga football team to upset No. 3 Appalachian State. It wants the Mocs to prove that last season’s 6-5 mark was no fluke and that this year’s team just might be good enough to reach the NCAA playoffs for the first time since 1984.

And all that may yet come true. But what if it doesn’t? What if UTC loses to Appy, ultimately loses more than it wins and winds up 4-7 instead of 7-4?

Even this newspaper’s John Frierson, who has watched the Mocs almost every day for the past two years, wrote in our preseason football section this past weekend, “It’s possible that this Mocs team could be better, but it could struggle to win five games.”

Of course, that’s the risk you take when you replace Division II Glenville State and Presbyterian with the likes of Jacksonville State and Eastern Kentucky.

But if this happens, if these sweet dreams turn sour, does the bandwagon suddenly empty? Do we go back to the days of counting by hand the number of fans inside Finley? Does all that momentum from Russ Huesman’s first season as head coach return to ground zero?

“That’s my No. 1 concern,” said Milly Fariss, the 84-year-old blue-and-golden girl who’ll cheer from the chancellor’s box on Saturday.

“I’ve already told Russ that he made a mistake winning so many games last year. We’re fickle here. I’m so proud of what we’ve done and we’re definitely on the right path, but our big year might not be this year.”

The longtime secretary of the Chattanooga Quarterback Club, Fariss is probably right that — at least on paper — UTC’s best season should be next autumn, when quarterback B.J. Coleman is a senior, the schedule’s easier and the team deeper.

But first there’s this year, or more specifically this week. There’s a television audience to entertain and a chance to cram close to 20,000 people inside Finley.

“I got butterflies today and we’re three days out,” said UTC athletic director Rick Hart on Wednesday. “Once kickoff arrives we’re hosting a party for, hopefully, 15,000 or more people, and we want them to have such a good time that they’ll come back regardless of the outcome on the field.”

That’s what needs to happen. That’s when a program has arrived, when the fans beome invested in the product enough that they believe their very presence can make a difference in the outcome. Or that they can at least have more fun for three hours inside Finley than they can anywhere else on a Saturday afternoon, whether the Mocs win or not.

But even Huesman knows that last year’s season upped the ante on this year’s campaign.

“Last year kind of sped up the process in a lot of people’s minds,” he said. “Even in our minds. The process is sped up. You win six your first year out when most people thought you’d win two or three, all of a sudden five is not enough.”

You can spin that has a positive or a negative. Those closest to Huesman see it as the former.

“What’s amazing to me,” said booster Don Lepard, a former UTC teammate of Huesman’s, “is that people all over town think we have a chance to beat the No. 3 [FCS] team in the country. Two years ago they would have been asking, ‘How bad do you think it will be?’”

Added Hart, “There’s hope now, regardless of the outcome. There’s a real belief that we can win. And whatever happens Saturday, I believe we’re going in the direction we want to go.”

But will the fans continue to follow the directions to Finley if this season begins to look more like so many past disasters than last year’s new beginning?

“If they see a product and a program that’s being built for the long haul,” said Huesman, “I hope that makes them appreciate it and they’ll say, ‘We know it’s being built and we’re going to continue to support you.’”

Because to do otherwise is to endanger UTC’s last, best hope for a winning program, regardless of how many or how few of those wins arrive this season.

E-mail Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com