It's a lot more than just a sport returning to East Tennessee State University.
"I told our players they need to understand this is a great moment," said ETSU head coach Carl Torbush. "Not only for ETSU, but for you because you represent us and you're going to get us to where we need to be."
Monday, ETSU held its first football practice in 11 years. The team features 15 players from the Knoxville area. In high school they play against each other, but now they are all Bucs.
"The first starting conversations that we had was 'oh you beat us' or 'we beat you' that kind of thing," said former Fulton Falcon Michael Scates.
"Getting to go against those guys for four years and maybe even before that in little league, just getting to come together and play as a team is really special," explained Jack DeFur who played at Hardin Valley.
A new program means new everything, from players and coaches, to helmets and footballs. Torbush said he leaned on some fellow coaches who started up programs.
"Bill Curry is a great friend of mine from Georgia State who started the program there. Bobby Lamb, of course, at Mercer who's a close friend of mine. The main thing is make sure you got enough balls on the first day of practice," said Torbush. "Obviously, starting a program up from scratch if it hadn't have been for a combined ability of all of us to talk about what we needed we would have left some things out, I can promise you that."
It's not only the rebirth of college football in Johnson City, but a chance for some young guys to continue playing the game.
"Usually, any where else you would go you would have to start off as a freshman, redshirted and then have to build yourself up from there," explained Scates. "Here we're the starting blocks the building blocks, so we can just come in, show our talents and hope for the best."
ETSU will have a year to practice. The Bucs first game is September 3, 2015 against Kennesaw State.
