Chiltie's Musings

Today, the City of Chattanooga charged 6 UT-Chattanooga football players with rape. Not only that but according to Coach Allison, these 6 are not likely to return to the team, ever. Good riddance. This is the kind of thing that needs to happen at higher levels of sports to show younger players that this sort of behavior is not acceptable. Just because you’re a minor celebrity locally through athletic prowess, you can’t disrespect your university by behaving like this, consensually or not, and not have repercussions.

On other Mocs news, Terrell Owens, formerly of the Mocs, has been suspended for the remainder of the season by the Philadelphia Eagles. Its okay with me, he’s been a punk ever since he got to the NFL. I’m a little ashamed though, he came from my university, and is the most high profile former student out there right now (sorry Dennis Haskins , I love ya, but your celebrity’s not quite equal to his), and he’s being a punk.

The Mocs officially have a winning season now. This is awesome. Its the first one since 1997, and is a definitely new to me, since 1997 was the last time I was a student when my school’s team had a winning record (I have a habit of bad football schools). Congratulations guys, this kicks ass. I’m really disappointed I couldn’t make it there today.

On another note today was the running of the Head of the Hooch Regatta here in Chattanooga. It’s the second largest fall regatta in the country, and it packs in around a 1000 boats with around 4000 competitors. Great for the tourism of the city, showcasing our downtown waterfront quite nicely. This is the first year for the race to be in Chattanooga, it used to be at Lake Ranier in Gainesville, GA - the same place they had the rowing events for the 1996 Olympics - but Lake Ranier started charging too much to use the course, so they moved up here. I think its awesome. Chattanooga is an awesome city for rowing, not many places in the south have this much rowing, especially with 3 prep school rowing programs. Most youth rowing programs in the south are community programs not tied to a school (we have one of those too) but here in Chattanooga we have three high school programs. On top of that the McCallie School rowing program is one of the best youth programs in the country.

I raced the Men’s Club 8+ today. We did well, 3 mile course in 16:13. Unfortunately the top boat was 15:45, and we ended up in 6th out of 12. But when you consider we were facing Georgia, Clemson, Virgina Tech (we passed them, they started ahead of us), Florida, and other gigantic schools, thats a good showing for a small school that barely has enough heavyweight rowers to have an 8, much less a fast one. (Heavyweights weigh more than 165 pounds).

This really makes my university look bad. I love my university and its a pretty good school, and a generally safe school, especially for one in the downtown area of a city. These guys represent my university in everything they do, and being in a gang rape, even if it was consensual is unacceptable. I hope Rodney Allison doesn’t allow them to continue to play. Ever. Period.

First off seven football players, including the critical Lironnie Davis, were suspended last week pending investigation of a gang rape on campus. So now they couldn’t play against Appalachian State yesterday, leading to the other sad part of the weekend, the Mocs went down to App State 35-25. It’s okay because App State is one of the top ranked teams, and we hung in there well, but still we probably could have done better with Lironnie Davis in the game. Come on guys, keep it in you pants. We deserve to lose for the way you guys behaved.

The Mocs lost yesterday to the Western Carolina Catamounts. The special teams really screwed them. They gave up two touchdowns off of blocked punts right at the start of the second half and never recovered. This is especially disappointing as they were tied for first in the conference until this game, now they’ve dropped out of first. Now they are 5-3 overall and 2-2 in the conference. Granted they’ve beaten a couple of ranked teams this year, and its been a surprising year, but this is still disappointing. I hope Rodney Allison gets the special teams in gear before next week. They’ve still got App State and Furham coming up, both very good teams.

The Mocs beat Elon 10-7 last night, should have been a bigger win, but a win is a win so I’m happy. This puts them up at 2-1 in the SoCon and 5-2 overall, astounding for a team that won two games all season last year. They’re back home Saturday against Western Carolina, let’s hope they can pull it off again.

GO MOCS!!!

So the Mocs beat Liberty University saturday on a last second field goal by Esteban Lopez. This puts the Mocs at 4 and 2 which is just phenomenal. It’s really blowing my mind since I’m conditioned to accept a losing football team, my high school team won 1 game over two seasons at one point. This is awesome. GO MOCS!!!!

The Mocs won their homecoming game today against Wofford. Man thats awesome. Its an incredible upset, since Wofford beat Georgia Southern and is ranked in the top 25. I didn’t go to the game today, too much homework, but it sure was exciting on the radio.

Final score: Chattanooga 25, Wofford 13

UTC Homecoming 2005, against Wofford, is this weekend. I really hope Coach Alison pulls his team together and gets this one. They had a great start to the season, defeating Tennessee Tech and Jacksonville State. Lately though they haven’t done so hot. Last week they got thoroughly hammered by Georgia Southern. This completely sucks, since Wofford beat Georgia Southern this year.

I’m so bummed out tonight I can’t even really express it. The Mocs totally blew it against Georgia Southern tonight. I figured they’d probably lose, but not 49-10. I hoped they’d at least keep it close. I think the real kicker was the Southern drive in the third quarter. They really stuck it to the Mocs with that drive, running 6 minutes off the clock and wearing out the defense. One of the only times the Eagles QB tried to pass, he got sacked. But that wouldn’t even help us, since the refs called a facemask on the tackle and gave them 5 yards anyway. After that, I think the Mocs seemed to just give up. Southern’s offense is a completely running offense and we just couldn’t stop them this week.