In His Time: Produced by Tate Johnson, MocsVision Production Director. Story written by Shane Shoemaker, GoMocs.com writer. Contributors: Chris Goforth, Interview/Historian.

More Than a Mascot -- Influencer, Chattanooga's Finest, Hall of Famer
You'll see him running around at games this fall. Flexing his gray feathered muscles, staring with those yellow piercing eyes and pointing with that navy beak. That's the Scrappy that everyone knows now. He's the beloved mockingbird mascot for the Mocs who riles up the home crowds and intimidates the away ones at Finley Stadium on Thursdays and Saturdays during football season. Most would not think twice at the name, believing that it was a simple, fun two-syllable moniker fitting for a mascot. Most don't know, however, that Chattanooga's favorite mascot (sorry, Louie) is named after one of the most revered and respected coaches in Chattanooga history.
 
As time passes on, it seems so easy to forget the past, but UTC, its fans, alum and staff should always remember who Scrappy Moore was because of how essential his story is to the university. "They need to realize that this started somewhere," former tight end Nubby Napolitano (1966-68) said. "This started with a person named Scrappy Moore — and actually even before him. But Scrappy laid the groundwork for everything that's around here. You've got to have a good starting point, and he was."
 
The naming of the university's mascot is a light homage, at best, to the late coach, as his contributions reached much farther. "Coach Moore was huge in making our campus what it is today," former UTC Assistant Vice Chancellor for Alumni Affairs, Jayne Holder said. "The athletics program, the traditions that we have — I think Scrappy Moore was core to that."
 
In his 35 seasons as head football coach, Scrappy's record was 170-148-14, which accumulated to a 53.31% winning percentage. He won three Dixie Conference championships (1931, 1940–1941) and one Southeastern Intercollegiate Athletic Association championship in 1931. In 1967, his final season, he won the AFCA College Division National Coach of the Year. He was also, at one point, the longest tenured coach at one university.
 
Scrappy never won a national championship and he never won more than nine games (1931, his first season). His resume can be debated, but those who would do that probably don't know of his innovation and gifted knowledge for the game of football. "I think this story of Scrappy Moore is a critical story to the history of football in America. I mean, I think he was that important," the author of the book Scrappy: The Life and Legend of Andrew C. "Scrappy" Moore, Stephen Byrum said. 
 
Without a Scrappy Moore, maybe there wouldn't be a Paul "Bear" Bryant— or at least not as good of one. The knowledge that Scrappy possessed for football influenced many like Bryant who throughout most football seasons every Tuesday morning would call Scrappy to go over the previous week's game, looking for tips and insight on how to fix particular issues. 
 
"By his own admission those calls were a very integral part of everything Bryant did, especially when he first came to Alabama in his coaching career," Byrum said. "And so, Scrappy Moore was looked upon by guys as being almost a genius at football and able to tell them things they could do with their personnel beyond their expertise."
 
Whether it was an early version of the West Coast offense, moving players on defense before the snap or alterations in the kicking game, Scrappy was said to be doing all of these things well before they became commonplace. He was constantly adapting and adjusting schemes in every facet of the game. "If you really go in depth with his real strengths, he was really well respected for his kicking game — also, his defense," Napolitano said. "That's why these great coaches would call him. He was one of the first to punt on third down, for example. He really knew how to take what he had and use it against the other team or defend the other team. You knew when he spoke, he spoke football truth."
 
His football contributions go by woefully unnoticed in the eyes of many, unfortunately. But they shouldn't be. His lack of results on the field could be attributed to UC being independent, his lack of talented players and depth, being at a small school and a lack of funding. "I felt like if Coach Moore had gone to a larger school that he could have been as good of a coach as there was in the country at that time. But for whatever reason he chose not to," former defensive back for the Mocs from 1961-64 Jerry Harris said. 
 
His job was nearly ironclad, secure. And nothing more was evident of that than when the Mocs, after going 1-9 in the 1950 season when Scrappy changed his offensive scheme to the t-formation from the Notre Dame box to better adapt to the times, was given a car at the end of the season. "He'd take a chance. He didn't mind. He'd take a chance and change for the good of the program," Dan Washburn said.
 
Scrappy was loyal to a fault to the city of Chattanooga and the university, and in return, they were just as loyal to him. He was the University of Chattanooga. "He just loved Chattanooga," former Chattanooga sportswriter Roy Exum said.
 
"Well, let me show you a town; let me show you his city. That belongs to Scrappy," Exum told the college football hall of fame selection committee when first appealing to have Scrappy inducted. Exum, along with Scrappy's son, Scrappy Jr., fought for three years to have Scrappy inducted, feeling it was all but appropriate to have Chattanooga's favorite son's contributions recognized in their rightful place. It wasn't until Exum joined the selection committee that Scrappy was posthumously inducted in 1980.  
 
No matter what hall of fame he's inducted into (and there are several), he's enshrined in those halls for more than just being a football coach. It's possible that outside of contributions to the city of Chattanooga, the purest form of his recognition comes from his former players. 
 
"I think you go back to his players and you see the successes that they've made in their own lives, the influence they've had on young people," Holder said when talking about how far Scrappy's influences on his former players have traveled. If you were to just ask some of the former players we talked to for this story like Jim Tanara, Bert Caldwell, Nubby Napolitano and Dan Washburn, they'd tell you Scrappy was more than just a football coach. "He had a great impression on young men at that stage in their life to go on and to do well," former quarterback Dan Washburn said. "Some of the things he taught every day at practice and in a game carried into lifelong lessons."
 
Whether his former players became farmers, educators, coaches or businessmen after they graduated, most of them had great success, and in turn, helped others because of the great teaching and character building that Scrappy infused into them.
 
"His influence goes further than football, and I think most people realize that he's...he's not just the person that our mascot is named after," Holder said. "He truly is a legend and he's part of the foundation of this university."
 
Players In Need
Dan Washburn can still remember the snap count from all those years ago playing under center. DOWN … READY … 1-2 — SET—1-2 — GO — 1-2… But like any quarterback, sometimes there was a need to call an audible in hopes that changing the play would end in a better result. Washburn chose to call an audible of sorts to his curriculum his junior year when he changed his major from physical education to focus on math. When he made the switch, his grades started to suffer. "I didn't have any idea what I was doing, taking them physics, engineering math and all of that," Washburn said. Entering his senior year, he had to take summer classes to catch back up so he could graduate.
 
Not only did Washburn have the usual stresses of being a college student-athlete to deal with, but he was also married and trying to provide for his family. When Scrappy found out Washburn was having to take summer classes to catch up on his grades and was struggling financially, the Chattanooga coach promptly stepped in. To help provide for Washburn and his wife, Scrappy helped him get a job at a local water company, working during the day. But on his way home every evening, Washburn, dirty and ragged from work, would first make a stop at Fehn's restaurant. 
 
The restaurant was a local sensation going back to the 1930s and considered a bit of a staple to downtown Chattanooga until its permanent closing in 2014. Whether it was their famous fried chicken or macaroon pie, Washburn said Scrappy had set it up to where Fehn's provided him and his wife with two "gourmet meals" each evening ready to take home.
 
Scrappy couldn't always provide the best fried chicken in Chattanooga for his players, but he did always provide for their needs in some way. "I think he was an entrepreneur about being able to figure out ways to get what he needed, economically, to make his team work," Byrum said. Whether it was an exaggeration or not, many we talked to said Scrappy ran the program out of his front pocket. To find money to put in his pockets, though, he sought help from people within the city for help, like "major civic leaders and donors," Harris said. "Scrappy would go to them and say, 'We need this, and we need that. We need some help. We need a new bed. We need a new desk. We need some money for food.' For him to operate this program and the way he did it was simply incredible."
 
The former defensive back and halfback Harris was another player that Scrappy helped when he was in need. Harris said that when he had an emergency back at home in south Alabama, he didn't have enough money for a train ticket. Scrappy asked him how much he needed and he gave it to him. Whether that money came from Scrappy's front pocket, that's unclear. 
 
"People don't understand what he had to work with," Harris said. "He had no money. He had no budget. The university didn't have any money. And everything he did he did on his own. He had to beg, borrow and steal for everything he got for us — which was not very much. But that was the best he could do. But at the time, for us, we thought it was great. Because most of us came from nothing anyway. And we didn't have anything to go back to."
 
Mocs On The Runway
Somehow, in his own unique Scrappy way, he gathered enough money together to get two planes to take his Mocs football team to Dallas to play North Texas in November of 1966. The first plane was bigger, carrying the first team with the second being more of a prop plane that carried the rest of the team traveling to the game. Nubby Napolitano was one of the twenty or so players that arrived on the first plane of upperclassmen. The second plane wouldn't arrive until about an hour later. Napolitano said there was a smaller airport beside the Dallas airport they landed at, looking over at the main airport. While waiting for the second plane to arrive, Napolitano said some of his teammates decided to aimlessly walk across the runway over to the main airport. Napolitano chose not to set his wheels on the runway. 
 
As a group of Chattanooga's finest players was casually walking across the runway as if it were a crosswalk going from Houston Street to East Fourth Street, planes were being diverted so as not to cause an utter disaster of sorts. The naive players were completely unaware as to what potential catastrophe they were creating, and security came quickly to pick them up to put them in a holding cell underneath the Dallas airport.
 
When Scrappy became aware of this, he ordered a van to take him over to the holding cells that his players were being held in, hoping he could get them released and not be charged and put in jail. Napolitano said it took all the persuasiveness and convincing Scrappy had in him to get his star players released that day, but he did it. 
 
Some of the notable players that did make the awkward trek that day across the runway were Henry Sorrell and Little All American Joe Lee Dunn. These were some of Scrappy's best players who were set to go up against the likes of future NFL hall of famer for the Pittsburgh Steelers "Mean" Joe Greene that day. Scrappy couldn't exactly discipline those guys, right? So, when Napolitano chose to ride over with Scrappy to pick up his teammates, it was him who got Scrappy's disciplinary wrath, getting yelled at, and not his teammates. Laughing at it now, Naplitano said, "He really gave me the blues."