November 14, 2025

C-N closes regular season with rivalry game, senior day against Tusculum

JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Carson-Newman (6-3, 5-3 South Atlantic Conference) will look to tie a bow on its regular season when it honors 23 seniors on Senior Day and tangles with Tusculum (1-8, 0-8 SAC) in the Second Oldest Rivalry in the State of Tennessee Saturday at 1 p.m. from Burke-Tarr Stadium.

Tusculum

1-9

Carson-Newman

7-3

Final	1	2	3	4	T
Tusculum (1-9)	0	0	0	0	0
Carson-Newman (7-3)	3	7	9	7	26

C-N Game Notes

Tusculum Game Notes

VIDEO: Ashley Ingram presser

VIDEO: In The Booth

VIDEO: 2024 C-N at Tusculum Cinematic Highlights

VIDEO: 2024 C-N at Tusculum Full Broadcast Replay

JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – Carson-Newman (6-3, 5-3 South Atlantic Conference) will look to tie a bow on its regular season when it honors 23 seniors on Senior Day and tangles with Tusculum (1-8, 0-8 SAC) in the Second Oldest Rivalry in the State of Tennessee Saturday at 1 p.m. from Burke-Tarr Stadium.

"We're excited to honor our seniors and we'd love to certainly send them out with a victory," head coach Ashley Ingram said. "You know, this would be two seasons in a row where we hadn't lost at home. So playing here at Burke-Tarr has been good for us. Ff we win Saturday, I think these last two seasons we will be 16-6. So they've played a huge part in this turnaround and things are heading in the right direction and a lot of it really just falls on their shoulders. The buy-in they've had, they've allowed us to coach them. They've been a joy to coach a bunch of great, great young men who've represented Carson-Newman and it's been an honor and a privilege to be able to coach them.

"But obviously we've got a team that's coming in, that's a rival, they're well coached. Coach (Billy) Taylor's obviously a very good defensive football coach. I would expect that it's going to be a knockdown, drag out kind of football game considering the styles of play by both teams."

Ranked 10 in the final region rankings, Carson-Newman still has an outside shot of an NCAA playoff berth. However, C-N's playoff fate is not in its own hands. Instead, the Eagles must root for the right dose of chaos. Losses by Wingate to Mars Hill, Emory & Henry to UVA Wise, Kentucky State to Shorter, Valdosta State to West Florida and North Greenville to UNC Pembroke, all would improve Carson-Newman's chances of making the postseason tournament for a second consecutive year, something that hasn't happened since 2012-13.

"Well, the big thing is we've got a team that would love to come in here and beat us," Ingram said. "I have no doubt about that. So we've got to focus on practicing well, preparing well. We've got to focus on beating Tusculum. We're going to need a little help to get into the playoffs, but if we don't win, it doesn't matter. And so that's got to be our sole focus. We can only control what we can control."

C-N has won nine consecutive home games. The Eagles longest home win streak since winning 10 straight home games from the 2008-09 seasons. C-N won its final three home games of 2008 before going 7-0 at home in 2009. C-N has seven all-time home win streaks that have hit double digits. Carson-Newman is unbeaten at home under second-year head coach Ashley Ingram. Catawba is the last team to beat C-N at Burke-Tarr Stadium, doing so in the 2023 season finale. The Eagles nine consecutive home wins are tied for the fourth-longest active streak nationally.. Carson-Newman's longest home win streak came from 2001-2007 when it won 31 straight games inside Burke-Tarr Stadium.

Carson-Newman is without a special teams score, and also without a defensive TD. C-N last went without a non-offensive score in 1995.

Carson-Newman and Tusculum renew what is the second-oldest rivalry game in the state of Tennessee. The Pioneers and Eagles first met in 1904. (The Tennessee/Vanderbilt series is the oldest by eight years- 1896).

The Eagles won 10 straight contests from 1935-1950, missing a handful of years because of World War II. Carson-Newman outscored Tusculum 359-20 over that stretch. The Eagles shutout TU in eight of those meetings.

Since a one-point, 31-30 overtime victory for the Pioneers in 2016, the series has been marked by blowouts. The average margin of victory in that stretch for the winning team is 25.7 points. The exception to that is 2023's 27-21 win in Burke-Tarr Stadium.

Tusculum won the last meeting between the teams in Jefferson City in 2023. It was the Pioneers first win on the banks of Mossy Creek since 1936.

With two triple option teams getting after it Saturday, we'll go ahead and mention that the shortest game Carson-Newman has played in the last 25 years took 2:15 to play on Sept. 16, 2006 at Saint Augustine's. The Eagles won that one 24-14. Carson-Newman has played 21 sub-2:30 games since 2000.

"There's a lot of similarities," Ingram said. "They've got an under center package, they've got a gun package, they've got some talented guys. I know they've had the injury bug hit them at QB quite a bit throughout the season, so that doesn't help. It seems to me like they're playing some of their better football late in the year offensively and then defensively they're good on defense and Coach Taylor knows what he's doing. He understands how he wants to attack us. I think last year we scored a lot of points, but I think some of that's a little bit of an anomaly (because of defense and special teams scores). We're going to have to strap it up and we're going to have to play well to have a chance to win on Saturday."

The Pioneers lead the SAC in two statistical categories including defensive TDs (3 - 7th in NCAA II) and fewest interceptions thrown (1 - T2nd in DII). The Pioneers are tied with C-N for the latter category. Strangely enough, both C-N and TU threw their first picks of the season last week.

Tusculum put up 49 points in its season-opening game against Bluefield State, since then, Tusculum has scored 89 points. If you take away defensive scores, the Pioneers' injury-beleaguered offense has scored 68 points since the opener.

Rashad Watson is the league's top tackler. He averages 9.3 stops per game, that ranks him 23rd nationally. His 5.11 solo stops per game are also tops in the SAC and rank 24th nationally.

Tusculum play-by-play voice Brian Stayton is in his 29th year broadcasting Pioneer football. He is the second-longest serving football voice in the league behind Newberry's Jimmie Coggins (42 years). Stayton is a former member of the Carson-Newman men's soccer team. His 20 career goals are good for 13th all-time. His six career game-winning goals still rank 10th all-time in school history.

Carson-Newman has kept the defensive pressure dialed up. With a sack in every week of the 2023 and 2024 seasons, the last two years' teams are the fourth and fifth this century to tally a sack in every week of the season. C-N has registered a sack in 32 straight weeks and 40 of the last 41. This is the longest stretch of weeks with a sack this century. C-N has never had three consecutive seasons where it sacked an opposing QB every week of all three seasons. Carson-Newman leads the SAC with 2.67 sacks per game.

Ashley Ingram is coaching in his 22nd game as C-N head coach. A win would give him 16 for his career and move him past Mike Turner for the most wins in the first two years of a coaching career at C-N.

Kickoff between the Eagles and Tusculum is set for 1 p.m. Coverage on the Eagle Sports Network begins at noon with the AEC Tailgate Show on Joy 620 (WRJZ-AM, Knoxville), and online at cneagles.com/live. A video stream is available with a subscription to FloCollege at cneagles.com/FloFB. The ESN also allows you to go "Inside the Booth" with a live feed of the ESN crew on YouTube