BucsEast Tennessee State football, 1920 to now
An independent record of the program that went quiet for eleven seasons and came back.
Last game: November 22, 2003. Next one: September 3, 2015.
Eleven years dark
In 2003 East Tennessee State dropped football and gave money as the reason. The program had played since 1920, indoors under the Memorial Center roof since 1977, and it went out with a win: a field goal on the last play beat The Citadel 16-13. After that there was no schedule, no recruiting class and no Saturday crowd in Johnson City, and the school left the Southern Conference. For most programs that is where the story stops. Here former players, band members and fans kept asking for it back. They met the governor and local lawmakers, passed around studies of what college athletics cost and bring in, and waited for the people in charge to change.
Pick a season
Drag through more than a century. The gaps are real: no team during the Second World War, and none from 2004 to 2014.
2003
The last game for eleven years. The Citadel, November 22, 16-13 on a final-second field goal.
What it took
Then and now
6 photographs
About this site
Bucfootball.com is an independent archive. It is not run by East Tennessee State University, its athletics department or the foundation that once used this address.
Scores, dates and names here are checked against the public sources listed on the history page.
- First season
- 1920
- Colors
- Navy and old gold
- Buccaneers since
- 1935
- Home
- Greene Stadium, Johnson City