Ex-Moc Tull back in NFL

Three-time Southern Conference defensive player of the year Davis Tull from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is back in the NFL, having been signed Friday by the Jacksonville Jaguars. Joining ex-UTC wide receiver C.J. Board on the Jaguars’ training-camp roster, Tull gives the Mocs eight alumni currently on NFL teams. Tull set the SoCon career record for sacks with 37 from 2011 to 2014 — the seventh most in NCAA history — and he is third in the SoCon with a school-record 60 tackles for lost yardage. He was a fifth-round draft pick of the New Orleans Saints in 2015 but spent that season on injured reserve and the 2016 season on the Atlanta Falcons’ practice squad. He was on the Los Angeles Rams’ practice squad for parts of the 2017 season, according to a UTC release Monday, and played for the Memphis Express in the Alliance of American Football early this year. The other former Mocs on active NFL rosters are veteran cornerback Buster Skrine with the Bears, Keionta Davis with the Patriots, Tae Davis with the Giants and Corey Levin, Isaiah Mack and Kareem Orr with the Titans.

BASKETBALL

› A “Remembrance of Life” for area basketball star Liz Hannah Jackson is set for tonight at 7 at Cleveland First Baptist Church on Stuart Road, following a visitation period that begins at 4 p.m. at the church. Interment will be at noon Wednesday at Sunset Memorial Gardens. Jackson died Saturday at age 63. After a three-time all-state career at Bradley Central High School, she became the first female to sign a basketball scholarship with Cleveland State Community College and was a two-time All-American there and then a two-time All-Ohio Valley Conference player at Middle Tennessee State University. A Bradley County schoolteacher for 35 years, she married UTC All-America and national champion wrestler Turner Jackson, now the Bradley Central athletic director. Both are in the Greater Chattanooga Sports Hall of Fame, and their two daughters were basketball standouts at Tennessee and Tennessee Wesleyan. Tributes may be made on the Companion Funeral Home website.

GOLF

› UTC released Monday its men’s golf schedule for the 2019-20 school year, and it includes courses from the Atlantic Coast to Northern California. The schedule begins as usual in the prestigious Carpet Capital Collegiate tournament at The Farm in nearby Rocky Face, Georgia. That is Sept. 6-8. Then come the UAB Collegiate in Birmingham (Sept. 23-24), the Alister Mackenzie Invitational hosted by the California Golden Bears (Oct. 7-8) — a first for the Mocs program — the Grandover Collegiate in Greensboro, North Carolina (Oct. 27-28) and the East Bay Deli Classic at Kiawah Island, South Carolina (Nov. 3-5). The 2020 part of the schedule includes the Mobile Sports Authority Intercollegiate (Feb. 10-11); the Seminole Intercollegiate at Tallahassee, Florida (Feb. 22-23); Auburn’s Tiger Intercollegiate at Opelika, Alabama (March 8-10); the Linger Longer Invitational at Greensboro, Georgia (March 20-22); the Old Waverly Collegiate at West Point, Mississippi (April 15-16), and the SoCon tournament at Greensboro, Georgia (April 21-23). The Linger Longer and SoCon events will use different courses at the Reynolds Lake Oconee club. NCAA Division I regionals are set for May 18-20. “Ryan (Heisey, assistant coach) and I worked really hard to challenge our guys,” head coach Mark Guhne said in a UTC release. “We added Cal’s event because we want our guys to experience a new destination. It was important to improve the strength of schedule. We want our guys to play against the best competition possible.”

› Cleveland State has three golf tournaments scheduled for the fall semester, all in Georgia and all with mostly four-year schools. The Cougars will play Sept. 9-10 in the Coastal Georgia Invitational at Jekyll Island, Oct. 21-22 in the Chick-fil-A Collegiate Invitational at Rome and Oct. 28-29 in the Eagle Invitational at Nob North in Cohutta.