The 2016 East Tennessee State Buccaneers football team represented

East Tennessee State University East Tennessee State University (ETSU) is a public research university in Johnson City, Tennessee. Although it is part of the State University and Community College System of Tennessee, the university is governed by an institutional Board of Tr ...

(ETSU) in the 2016 NCAA Division I FCS football season and were in the first year of their second stint as football members of the

Southern Conference The Southern Conference (SoCon) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. Southern Conference football teams compete in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly ...

(SoCon). ETSU had originally joined the SoCon in 1978, with football joining in 1979, but dropped the sport after the 2003 season and left the conference entirely in 2005. ETSU returned to the SoCon as a full but non-football member in 2014, at that time announcing that the school would reinstate football with play beginning in the 2015 season. The Buccaneers played that season as an FCS independent. They were led by second-year head coach

Carl Torbush Carl William Torbush Jr. (born October 11, 1951) is former American football and baseball coach. He served as the head football coach at Louisiana Tech University in 1987, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1997 to 2000, and Ea ...

and played all but one of their home games at

Kermit Tipton Stadium Steve Spurrier Field at Kermit Tipton Stadium is a 6,600-capacity multi-use stadium on the campus of Science Hill High School in Johnson City, Tennessee. In addition to serving as home to the Hilltoppers, the stadium played host to the East Tenn ...

. The other home game, the Buccaneers' first SoCon game since 2003, was held at the nearby

Bristol Motor Speedway Bristol Motor Speedway, formerly known as Bristol International Raceway and Bristol Raceway, is a NASCAR short track venue located in Bristol, Tennessee. Constructed in 1960, it held its first NASCAR race on July 30, 1961. Bristol is among the m ...

on September 17. The game was played on a temporary grass surface that will be laid down from the

Tennessee Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...

–

Virginia Tech Virginia Tech (formally the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and informally VT, or VPI) is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. It also ...

game to be held one week earlier. They finished the season 5–6, 2–6 in SoCon play to finish in seventh place.

Schedule

Game summaries

At Kennesaw State

Vs. Western Carolina

At Wofford

Chattanooga

At VMI

Furman

West Virginia Wesleyan

At The Citadel

At Mercer

Cumberland

Samford

References

{{East Tennessee State Buccaneers football navbox East Tennessee State East Tennessee State Buccaneers football seasons

East Tennessee State Buccaneers football The East Tennessee State Buccaneers football program is the intercollegiate American football team for East Tennessee State University (ETSU) located in Johnson City, Tennessee. The team was dormant from the end of the 2003 season until being r ...