Scots

Kin Takahashi stood barely five foot two and weighed 123 pounds. A Japanese immigrant and Maryville College alumnus, he was the first quarterback, the first captain and the first head coach of the team that became the Scots — an unlikely start for a program that has now carried his name into the Maryville Scots Athletic Hall of Fame, where he was inducted in 1977.

The Scots play at Lloyd L. Thornton Stadium, on Honaker Field, in garnet and orange. Their conference championships sit nearly a century apart: two in the old Smoky Mountain Conference, in 1930 and 1931, and then nothing until the program resurfaced under Mike Rader, who won the USA South Athletic Conference title in 2012 and again in 2013. That second season is the one still pointed to as the best in the club's history. The Scots have since added titles in 2016, 2018 and 2024, with further playoff appearances in 2018 and 2024, and head coach Ben Fox has run the program since 2020.

Older results are further back still: the Scots played in the Tangerine Bowl in 1946, the Rocket Bowl in 1960, and the Honaker Bowl in both 1965 and 1966. Their rivalry with the Rhodes Lynx has carried through the decades that followed. Off the field, defensive back Drew Collins, a 2020 graduate, went on to draw national attention less for his tackling than for his golf swing and his following on social media.

Seven conference championships in 134 years of football.