Carl Torbush had already moved to a place on Douglas Lake along the Smokey Mountains in eastern Tennessee. After 35 years coaching at college football’s highest level, the 64-year-old figured he would retire surrounded by the beauty of a place he has always called home. One day, an old friend and a Rocky Top legend called Torbush and changed all those plans.
[restrict paid=”true”]Former Tennessee head coach Phillip Fulmer, the head coach when the Volunteers claimed the 1998 FBS national title, had been hired as a consultant by East Tennessee State, a small school in Johnson City, Tennessee. Fulmer was brought aboard to help ETSU resurrect a football program that was cut in 2003 sighting financial struggles.
Fulmer has plenty of pull in Tennessee and around the South. His connections run deep. He and Torbush are good friends, having crossed paths many times as Torbush worked as the defensive coordinator at Ole Miss (1983-86), North Carolina (DC from 1988-1997, head coach from 1997-2000), Texas A&M (2003-05) and Mississippi State (2009).
East Tennessee State had a vision — the promise of new facilities including a new stadium have already been approved — and Torbush saw the potential of a fledgling FCS program in a talent-rich part of the country. In June of 2013, Torbush was hired out of a pool of more than 250 applicants to lead ETSU into its second era of football.
“Being from this area originally, this was a chance for me to come home and help build something that at one time had an excellent tradition,” Torbush said. “When this school dropped football, I saw the pain and suffering of people. I’ve said it time and time again: if you are a university that has 16,000 students and you are in the South, the state of Tennessee, you need to have college football. That was missing here for 12 years. This was a chance for me to come back and give back to something I thought was special at one time.”
On Saturday, Torbush and the Buccaneers face likely their toughest test yet. ETSU takes on No. 21 Montana State, the first ranked FCS opponent since the team’s revival.
“They are a very talented team, they are just young,” MSU ninth-year head coach Rob Ash said. “What I see is a very athletic group and a group that is getting better and making progress every week because they are so young and they are getting a lot of experience. We respect every opponent and this will be their Super Bowl, playing in a great environment here. We will take it extremely seriously and we anticipate a great effort from them.”
Torbush signed a recruiting class each of the last two Februarys in preparation for this season. The Bucs are made up of almost exclusively freshmen and redshirt freshmen. ETSU has six straight losses in its first season back on the gridiron, including losses to Division III schools Maryville (28-21) and Emory & Henry (27-24).
“To start over again, it’s been tough,” Torbush said. “I didn’t expect to be sitting here at 0-6 but we are. I do feel like here in a couple of years when these freshmen and redshirt freshmen become juniors, mentally and physically we will have a football team that we have a chance to compete week in and week out.”
East Tennessee State’s roster features just seven players who are not redshirt freshmen or freshmen. Mike O’Cain, the head coach at North Carolina State from 1993 until 2000, is the offensive coordinator but a young offense led by quarterback Austin Herink is averaging just eight points per game against Division I opponents. Defensively, ETSU is giving up 53 points per game in its four D-I games.
“We have a lot of freshman starting and you don’t see that anywhere else,” said redshirt freshman linebacker Dylan Weigel, who leads the Bucs with 66 tackles and seven tackles for loss. “A lot of our freshmen would be on a practice squad at any other college right now redshirting. It’s what we have.”
The Buccaneers have 70 players from Tennessee. Weigel hails from Ohio just north but he was sold on the idea of rebuilding a program while getting a chance to live in a beautiful place.
“Being a first-year program, you can come in and play right away and I’ll have four years of playing college football, which not a lot of people get,” Weigel said.
The Buccaneers have shown their youth, particularly when games get tight. ETSU found itself tied 21-21 at halftime against Marysville in Johnson City only to see the Fighting Scots score late in the fourth quarter. Against Emory & Henry, ETSU took a 24-20 lead a minute into the final frame. But E&H scored with 55 seconds to play.
“The biggest thing is we don’t have anybody to look up to,” Torbush said. “If things aren’t going well, we don’t have a junior or a senior that’s already been through it that can say, ‘Hey look, I was where you were.’ They have to rely on each other. That’s like being 14 years of age and some guys have an 18-year-old brother who tells them how to grow up compared to the other kid who doesn’t have anybody to teach him how to do anything.”
Torbush has been through adversity before, albeit not from such a ground level. When Torbush joined Mac Brown’s staff at North Carolina, the Tar Heels won one game each of the first two years, something Torbush said, “in today’s world of Internet and talk radio would’ve gotten us fired.” By 1996, Torbush was the National Defensive Coordinator of the Year and Brown had built the program to the point the Texas Longhorns came calling.
The losing has been hard for Torbush, a man that has experienced success at most of his stops. But he knows the struggles will make the first win that much sweeter. A 10-win season in the first season would cast sky-high expectations. Toiling through the growing pains helps Torbush believe the best is yet to come.
“If you asked me if I would do it again, I’d do it in a heartbeat and the great thing they have in me is I’m not going anywhere,” Torbush said. “This will be my last stop regardless. I’m 64 but I’m still young at heart and I still love the game and I still love being around the players. I didn’t take this job to develop the program and move to a bigger, better program. I’m here to stay.”
[/restrict]Photos courtesy of ETSU Athletics. All Rights Reserved.
