East Tennessee State Buccaneers

The East Tennessee State Buccaneers play FCS football out of Johnson City, Tennessee, a program that has been rebuilt from the ground up after a decade-long hiatus. Blue and gold, ETSU competes in the Southern Conference and has leaned on that comeback story -- shutting the program down after 2003 and reviving it in 2015 -- as a source of program identity and fan loyalty. The Buccaneers represent one of college football's more notable revival stories in recent memory.

East Tennessee State fielded its first football team in 1920, when the school was known as East Tennessee State Normal School, and moved through the Smoky Mountain Conference and Ohio Valley Conference before joining the Southern Conference in 1978. The program was discontinued after the 2003 season due to budget cuts and remained dormant for over a decade before being reinstated in 2015, returning to Southern Conference play in 2016. ETSU has not won a national or Southern Conference title in the modern revived era.