Editorial
Front Page - Friday, October 29, 2010
Coleman gives Chattanooga something to cheer about
Erica Tuggle
Team captain and quarterback for the Mocs football team, B.J. Coleman is a Chattanooga native who played with the UT Vols before returning to Chattanooga to play for UTC. He has 3,787 career passing yards and needs only 46 yards to pass Antonio Miller for the seventh all-time spot at UTC in this area.
Before the sun rises, B.J. Coleman wakes up to begin his day filled with many hours in the film room, several hours of class, meetings with coaches, practice time on the field and homework from class and football before bed and starting another day over the same way. While this schedule is already a great feat for any typical college student, Coleman, as quarterback and one of the three team captains for the UTC Mocs Football team, goes above and beyond typicality.
Coleman says, “I smile a lot because people know that athletes have a heavy burden on them, but sometimes they don’t exactly understand the typical day of an athlete.”
Here’s a hint: it takes a lot of organization and priority setting. As a junior communications major, Coleman has picked a writing and project intensive major. This means he has to balance writing papers, studying, making sure group work and field studies are done with the full-time job of being the quarterback of a college team that is having a great season with five wins and two losses so far.
“You have to be really on top of your work and can’t get behind,” Coleman says. “My mother and father were great and always made sure that I was on top of my stuff because they saw in the future ‘Look, you are going to have an opportunity to play collegiate athletics and you have to make sure you have a good balance between your studies and your athletic program.’ If you don’t make the grade, you can’t play on the field.”
Coleman’s mother and father both attended UTC, and his father played for the blue and gold alongside teammate and now head coach Russ Huesman. Coleman grew up in Chattanooga, and says the city has been an unbelievable asset to him as a place to live and thrive athletically, socially and spiritually.
Coleman began playing t-ball when he was four-years-old and has played many sports since then including basketball, baseball, wrestling and soccer; although it wasn’t until he was 10-years-sold that he began to play football for the YMCA. When he got older, he played with McCallie and then UTK with the Vols for a time, and he says he began to enjoy football for the aspects of it that allowed him to see the games within the game, the little things, and be meticulous in facing these. After his time with the Vols, he returned to Chattanooga, where he says he couldn’t be happier.
Coleman thrives in the communication program at UTC, where he enjoys the public speaking, non-verbal communication classes and the interaction with people. He says he likes the idea of speaking with people in general, whether that is through coaching or teaching or going into sales as career options.
He says, “I like the team aspect and working with a lot of different people to get a goal accomplished. I think communications is a perfect avenue for me because it gets me in touch with a lot of different people and networks, and with the business minor, that helps me with the marketing and the promotions and the public relations, and that is really valuable to me as well.”
Just as Coleman visualizes his future, he visualizes success on the field in order to accomplish it. On game day, after meetings with a walk-through and tips for the upcoming game, there is downtime where players relax, focus on the task at hand and visualize themselves doing the things they want to do right, Coleman says.
For all their games, whether at home or away, Coleman says they are on a business trip, not for enjoyment, and that is how he has to handle them in order to take the strides the team needs to reach their goal, of going to the championship.
This isn’t a lofty goal either. The way the team has been playing this season is very much part of the UTC drive to “Restore the Glory” of UTC athletics. Coleman himself has made quite an impression with the team since transferring from Tennessee, with 3,787 career passing yards (the eighth all-time at UTC), being the tenth Moc to throw for 3,000 yards in a career, having 31 career touchdown passes (fifth all-time at UTC), being one of two Mocs in school history with three 300-yard passing games and second in the SoCon and seventh in the nation with a 156.59 passer rating.
Coleman says he always enjoys the game of football, but admits that he likes to get away sometimes to a sport less competitive outside of the one he has chosen to play for college. Coleman and UTC receiver Joel Bradford spend their downtime on the golf course, and Coleman also likes to hunt and fish with his brother, Jarrod Coleman, who is a senior football player at McCallie already committed to play for UTC next year. Coleman says the brothers’ opportunity to play football is a blessing, but at the same time, they always make sure to make time for themselves to be together as brothers and friends.
“We really appreciate the opportunity we have here and realize we have a great opportunity in front of us and we are going to take full advantage of it,” he says. “The people and the buzz that is going around right now are really amazing. We are thankful for that but it is something that we have got to continue to create: keep taking care of our business on the field and off and be sure that we are being respectful in the public and socially because it is a business.
“It’s amazing to watch every Saturday people tailgating and supporting the colors of their favorite team, and that’s what we want Chattanooga to be. It’s a great town that has done a lot in the past 10 to 15 years to the downtown area and made it a really warm and family-esque home, and the people deserve a really great football team. That’s what we are trying to give them, and that’s what we will give them.”
Coleman encourages the community to continue to come out to the games. The next home games are Oct. 30 against Elon and Nov. 13 against Samford.
Coleman says, “We love seeing the amount of people there, and we have to continue to give them something to
cheer about.”
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