By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

It was with sadness that I received the news that the 2003 season would be the last for the football team of East Tennessee State University. With the final game mere weeks away, the curtain is falling on 83 years of Buccaneer gridiron glory. Well, maybe there wasn't always a great deal of glory but there was loads of history and tradition.

The first season for the football team of then-East Tennessee State College in Johnson City, Tenn., was 1920. According to the alumni magazine, ETSU Today, the Bucs lost their first two games to Carson-Newman College and Milligan College by a combined score of 85-0. The team won their next three games to finish 3-2, although, since the wins were over local high schools (Greeneville, Washington College Academy, and Johnson City), the sports world didn't exactly stand up and take notice. Still, it was a beginning.

In 1938, the school won its first football championship by finishing 6-2 in the Smoky Mountain Conference. The victories came over Carson-Newman College, Milligan College, Union College, Cumberland College, Tusculum College, and Maryville College. The losses came at the hands of Eastern Kentucky and King College.

During the 1960s, the team won two more championships. In 1962, ETSU won the Ohio Valley Championship and, in 1969, repeated the feat. The team saw it's best season ever in 1969 by going 10-0-1 and earning a trip to the Grantland Rice Bowl in Baton Rouge, La. The Bucs won the bowl game over Louisiana Tech and their storied quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, who would go on to the National Football League and earn four Super Bowl Rings with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Not bad for a team that got its first three victories over local high schools!

The Buccaneers then had a string of eight straight losing seasons before going 7-4 in 1979. In 1987, the Bucs took a 4-4 record into the game against heavily favored North Carolina State. In perhaps the most notable victory in the history of the school, ETSU beat the Wolfpack 29-14. On Nov. 30, 1996, the Bucs achieved ten victories for the second time in the team's history and also won its first playoff victory by defeating Villanova. In 2000, ETSU defeated Furman, ranked 6th in the nation and, in 2001, the Bucs downed Number 1-ranked Georgia Southern for the first and only victory over a Number 1-ranked team in the history of the school.

Yet, ETSU's football team has always been overshadowed by its neighbor 90 miles to the southwest, the University of Tennessee Volunteers. Even in Johnson City, there are probably more UT fans than ETSU fans. And the UT program is a moneymaker while ETSU's football program has been losing over a million dollars a year. In the end, it wasn't about history, or tradition, or even wins and losses and the dream of championships. In the end it all came down to money.

East Tennessee State is my alma mater but I have to confess that, even while I was on campus, I only went to a few football games. After the Marine Corps, I talked to one of the coaches about becoming a walk-on but, in the end, that decision was about money, too. I had a wife and son to house, clothe, and feed and that, along with the course load, didn't leave room for history, tradition, or even the dream of being a part of the football history of a mid-size college.

But there were hundreds and hundreds of young men who, year after year for over 80 seasons, would put on the cleats, wear the blue and gold, and compete in the heat, in the rain, and in the snow for hard fought victories or suffer bitter losses on their own small field of dreams nestled away in the hills of eastern Tennessee. Most would never see an NFL contract-- and nationally televised games, a weekly expectation for teams like the University of Tennessee, would forever remain an elusive fantasy. But it was college football and its best, devoid of scandal and untainted by the greed of millions of dollars and endorsements. For over 80 years, ETSU's Buccaneers played for one reason-the love of the game. It's a shame that next year and for the years after that the 13,000 seats in ETSU's domed stadium will be empty and silent.

Maybe it's true that all good things do come to an end, but one doesn't have to like it.

[David Epps is rector of Christ the King Charismatic Episcopal Church, which meets at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Sundays on Ga. Highway 34 between Peachtree City and Newnan. He may be contacted at FatherDavidEpps@aol.com or at www.CTKCEC.org. Some of the material in this article was obtained from the Fall 2003 issue of ETSU Today.]

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