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| Normally, we'd crop this shot of Maryville quarterback Bryson Rollins a little tighter, but the crowd in the background is a big part of the story. Maryville athletics photo by Patrick Spears |
By Greg Thomas
D3football.com
There are Saturday afternoons when the game becomes something bigger than the scoreboard, when a college football field becomes the beating heart of a campus. Saturday in Maryville, Tennessee, was one of those days.
The stands at Lloyd Thornton Stadium were packed shoulder to shoulder while canopies ringed the perimeter. Fans stood three and four deep beyond the end lines. Official attendance was 9,258 which is well over the stadium’s capacity, is the third-largest single-game crowd anywhere in Division III this season, and is the largest at any Division III stadium other than UW-Whitewater’s Perkins Stadium. At a school with an enrollment just over 1,100, the numbers alone tell the story: families, friends, alumni, and this town all showed up.
Maryville rewarded them with a 33-13 win over Centre, a program that has been a longtime rival and measuring stick but now a conference rival in the Scots’ debut season in the Southern Athletic Association. The victory moved Maryville to 5-0 for the first time since 1977.
Don’t mistake this for a decades-long climb finally reaching its summit. What’s happening at Maryville is not a slow burn. It’s a spark that caught and spread, a realization of potential that’s been right there waiting to be believed in.
Maryville football isn’t a story of slow reinvention. It’s a story of a team and a campus realizing, all at once, what they could be. Just three years ago, this same program was on the other side of every heartbreak.
In 2022, the Scots opened the season 0-3. They lost their opener to Berry on a touchdown with 16 seconds left. A week later, they fell to Shenandoah when the Hornets scored with 24 seconds remaining. Centre beat them by a single score. The cumulative result was brutal, but instructive.
That fall, head coach Ben Fox told Around the Nation he was preaching consistency and process, not panic. “You have to acknowledge that there is a championship to play for,” he said then, “but that’s a short motivator. We talk a lot about being consistent competitors. It doesn’t matter who we play or where we play. Are we doing the things we need to do to be the best team we can be?”
It was a message that didn’t always show up on the scoreboard that season, but it stuck.
Now, three years later, Fox and senior quarterback Bryson Rollins are the constants from that stretch of frustration. They’ve lived both sides of the line between “almost there” and “arrived.” Maryville’s first real arrival came last season.
In 2024, the Scots won their first USA South championship and captured their first-ever NCAA playoff victory — a 31–28 win over Berry, poetic justice for one of those 2022 heartbreaks. That result did more than make some Scot history. It proved Maryville could line up with one of the SAA’s heavyweights and not just belong, but win.
The program’s first season in the SAA has started on solid footing. At 5-0 and fresh off a decisive win against a playoff-tested Centre team, Maryville looks like it’s adjusted quickly to its new surroundings. Fox credits this senior class, and the group that came before, for shaping the team’s toughness and maturity, qualities that have helped the Scots rise to each new challenge so far.
“I think they’re just kind of battle hardened,” Fox said. “The seniors on this team wear a lot of scars from disappointment. They knew what it was like to work really hard and not be successful, to do a lot of things right and not see the tangible result of winning the game. They didn’t give up. They kept working hard and believed in the coaches and the vision of what our program could be.”
That belief is now paying visible dividends and Saturday’s atmosphere was proof that belief travels.
Quarterback Bryson Rollins, the 2024 USA South Offensive Player of the Year and D3football.com All-Region selection, became Maryville’s all-time passing leader long ago. On Saturday, he surpassed 10,000 career passing yards. Another record on a long list. But what he’ll remember about this one isn’t a stat line.
“I think it brings a lot more juice to us,” Rollins said. “Everybody likes a big crowd and home field advantage like that. We didn’t want to disappoint all the fans that came out.”
He stayed locked in through most of the game, but admits one moment made it impossible not to feel it.
“After (Jaquese) Abner’s pick-six,” he said, referring to the clinching score with just over three minutes left, “whenever we heard the crowd — that really brought a lot of energy.”
The cheers that echoed through campus weren’t just about a 5-0 start. They were about the feeling that something lasting is taking shape. Fox saw that same emotion reflected back at him.
“I thought it was the best of the things that make small college football special,” he said. “It was the people that love this school who came back because they have fond memories of it. It was a community that has embraced us. It was a lot of family and parents of our players who are having a great experience and showed up. And we were playing a really good team whose fans had a lot of passion too. It really made for a unique, special atmosphere.”
Maryville sits in Blount County, Tennessee, which is home to two of the state’s most successful high school football programs. The locals know good football when they see it, and Fox says the Scots have worked to meet that standard.
“This is a football community,” he said. “They’re used to winning and like to see football played at a high level. It always felt like our job was to put together a program that played that way. If we did, the support would be there and it’s been proven true.”
That support extends beyond the field. Fox points to strong backing from campus leadership as a foundation for the program’s rise. “There’s just a lot of buy-in for us to be successful. From our president, board, athletic director, and administration. I think they see the value athletics adds to the educational experience, not just for our players but for the rest of the student body.”
The foundation has also been laid inside the locker room. “The expectations of our players when we go into a game they expect to play well because they’ve earned the right to win,” Fox said. “Everybody wants to win on Saturdays, but you’ve got to want to win really bad during inside run on Tuesdays just as much. I think we’ve gotten closer to doing that consistently, and the results have shown that.”
That consistency is part of why Fox believes this isn’t a fleeting moment.
“I think it’s helped that we’re upfront in recruiting about what it’s going to be like when they get here,” he said. “We’ve been able to attract guys who want that in the building, so they’re not surprised. That’s kind of helped the culture sustain itself. The players are driving the culture more than the coaches.”
Players, coaches, and a campus community all pulling together is the kind of alignment every Division III program strives for but finds difficult to achieve. That’s why Saturday felt so significant. Not just for the result, but for the resonance.
The fans who packed the stands and ringed the field didn’t just witness a win, they saw a reflection of themselves in a team that has endured and grown. They saw what belief looks like when it finally meets opportunity.
For the players who once trudged off that field 0-3, the sound of thousands cheering was a reminder of how far they’ve come. For everyone else, it was a glimpse of what’s possible when a small program captures something larger than itself.
Maryville fans got a taste of success last fall. A championship, a playoff win, and a sense that the Scots could make noise among the nation’s best. Now, they believe this team can do it again, and maybe more.
For a few hours on a perfect fall Saturday, Maryville College felt like a place where everything was possible. When a small program feels big because everyone in the stands made it so, that’s the magic of Division III.
Winless No More
Four teams found the win column for the first time this season in Week 6. Gustavus Adolphus, Kenyon, Loras, and Rose-Hulman all picked up wins to finish the first halves of their seasons. 24 teams remain winless in Division III, but at least one will get a win this week as Beloit and Lawrence square off in the MWC. Just nine teams finished winless in 2024.
16 teams remain unbeaten in Division III and we may leave Week 7 with the same number of unbeatens as no unbeaten teams face off this weekend. Only the ARC and NJAC have multiple unbeaten teams left. If all of the other unbeatens stay that way, we could match 2022’s 14 teams with unbeaten regular seasons — that was a high going back to 2012. Unbeaten regular seasons are always special, of course, but with top 8 seed protection on the line, running the table is more valuable than ever.
Seven ways to Saturday
Whether you need to recap the week that was or get ready for the week to come, D3football.com is your daily source for fresh Division III football content. We’re bringing the content seven ways to Saturday.
Sunday: New Top 25 poll
Monday: Around The Nation podcast. Patrick Coleman and Greg Thomas recap the weekend that was and preview the weekend to come in Division III football.
Tuesday: Team of the Week Honors
Wednesday: Features columns
Thursday: Around the Nation Column
Friday: Quick Hits featuring our panel’s predictions and insights into the weekend’s games
Saturday: Game Day! The D3football.com Scoreboard has all of your links for stats and broadcasts.
I’d Like to Thank…
Special thanks to Maryville’s Bryson Rollins and Ben Fox for spending time with Around The Nation for this week’s column. Additional thanks to Jacob Woods, Assistant Athletics Director for Communications at Maryville College for coordinating this week’s conversations!
Read options?
There’s nothing small about small college football. Division III is home to 241 teams, and many thousands of student-athletes and coaches. There are so many more stories out there than I can find on my own. Please share your stories that make Division III football so special for all of us! Reach out to me at greg.thomas@d3sports.com, on X @wallywabash, or on Bluesky @d3greg.bsky.social to share your stories.
