By MONTE DUTTON

While the Atlantic Coast Conference was meeting in Charlotte, N.C., amid rumors and litigation, the Southern Conference seemed stable and cohesive in Greenville on Tuesday.

That doesn’t mean the coming football battles won’t be fierce. It’s a reason they will be.

“Somebody asked me if we had to rebuild,” Furman head coach Clay Hendrix said. “I’m, like, rebuilding is what you do when you fall down. It’s a matter of keeping the pulse going. You can’t let up.”

That’s why the SoCon head coaches picked a team that lists three starters returning on each side of the ball to finish second.

It doesn’t mean that the sport isn’t changing. Bigger schools are recruiting the best talent the FCS (and smaller) schools have to offer. They discard their disappointing recruits, and smaller schools send them a career lifeline. It’s not as much a revolving door as a set of escalators.

The battle against free trade is lost.

“Every year you don’t know what your team is until right before camp starts,” Western Carolina’s Kerwin Bell said. “There’s so much moving around, so many guys going different places.

“We’ve been lucky. Most of the kids we’ve brought in have said I want to stay here and do something, and basically, it’s never been done before.”

Western Carolina has never won the SoCon in football. Last year the Catamounts were 7-4.

The preseason favorite, Chattanooga, went 8-5 a year ago, and two of the losses were to Furman.

Head coach Rusty Wright said, “It goes back to your day-to-day environment, whatever you want to call it, culture, commitment, the type of kids you recruit. Do they fit you? Do they fit what you’re doing? You’re going to recruit more than you should have to, to prepare for what you’re losing.

“It’s just harder to keep everybody happy.”

Stability is fleeting, but the SoCon has much going for it. The quality of competition is high. In an age in which diversity is discussed in other ways, the SoCon football wars pair five state schools – two are military – against four private ones.

The game outside the lines remains largely outside the rules, in part because there aren’t enough of them, but most of the coaches gathered at the Hotel Hartness have at least charted the changes.

The league’s new head coaches – Tre Lamb (from four years at Gardner-Webb) at East Tennessee State and Mike Jacobs (four at Lenoir-Rhyne) at Mercer – are learning the customized ropes of their new employers.

“It takes time to get it where you wanted,” said Lamb, whose uncle, Bobby, is ex-head coach and quarterback of the Paladins (now at Anderson University). “I think it takes a full calendar year.

“We have acquired some talent. Hopefully we look different. We’re faster. … Changing the culture takes a little time.

“I’ve only coached the transfer portal. I was hired (as a head coach) in 2020 at age 30. I don’t know any other way. … We may not love it, but you better do it or be left behind, at least at a place like ETSU.”

Hendrix has the culture down. He’s preparing reinforcements to make another SoCon title run.

Sure, the Paladins are reigning champions, but Hendrix and his staff have many holes to plug. Furman being picked second (to Chattanooga) is quite a measure of respect.

“Last year, we were old, and I wondered, ‘Can these guys still get better? Can we keep ‘em healthy?’,” Hendrix said. “This year there’s a little more competition.

“We’ve recruited well. We’ve obviously done a good job retaining kids. Our coaches have done a phenomenal job developing guys, you know, and [this year] is why we do it.”

The Mocs, under Wright, have won six, seven and eight games the past three seasons.

Wofford’s Shawn Watson, last seen when the Terriers shocked Furman, 19-13, in their most recent game, spoke similarly in spite of last season’s 2-9 record.

“You’ve got to know your lane, and you’ve got to know your school, your model,” he said. “I believe in the friendships that come from being at a school four or five years. I’m talking being a student, not just a program. My cherished relationships today are the guys I played with in college. It’s been my whole life.

“I love Wofford College because I believe in the four- or five-year experience.”

I don’t pretend to know as much about the Southern Conference’s teams as the men who coach it.

I left SoCon Media Day upbeat about the Paladins because Hendrix and the players, Joshua Harris and Evan DiMaggio, carried that vibe. They are excited, to paraphrase John F. Kennedy, not because it is easy but because it is hard.

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