The Troy Trojans football program represents Troy University at the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level, where it has competed since 2001. The football program joined the Sun Belt Conference in 2004. The current head football coach is Gerad Parker. Troy has won 23 conference championships, with eight in the Sun Belt Conference. The Trojans play home games at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Troy, Alabama.
History
Early history (1909–1965)
Troy University has fielded a football team continuously since 1946. Prior to that year, the team was fielded with many interruptions from 1909 to 1942. Eight years were skipped from 1913 to 1920 due to lack of participation and later World War I, while the Wall Street Crash of 1929 kept the team from playing that year.
Coach George Penton led the Troy Trojans for two seasons, 1911 and 1912. Under his tutelage, the Trojans completed their only undefeated season, a 3–0 record.
Albert Elmore was the head coach from 1931 to 1937. A University of Alabama alumnus, he is credited with changing the team name to "Red Wave" (a variation of Alabama's "Crimson Tide")."Troy University Football." Encyclopedia of Alabama. Retrieved July 15, 2014. In seven years at Troy State, five of which were winning seasons, Elmore compiled a 35–30–3 record.
In 1947, Fred McCollum took the head coaching position at Troy State. From 1947 to 1950, he compiled an overall record of 20 wins, 18 losses and three ties (20–18–3) with the Red Wave, which included back to back six-win seasons in 1948–1949.
William Clipson was head football coach from 1955 to 1965. His overall record of 20–68 included a 6–3 winning season in 1964. He had previously served as football coach at Troy High School from 1942 to 1951 and head basketball coach at Florida Southern from 1952 to 1955.
Billy Atkins era (1966–1971)
On January 8, 1966, Billy Atkins was named the head coach of the Troy football team. In 1968, he coached Troy State to the NAIA National Championship and was named the NAIA Coach of the Year. Atkins finished at Troy State with a 44–16–2 record before leaving in 1971. He is the second-winningest coach in Troy history, only behind Larry Blakeney. Atkins was inducted into the Troy University Sports Hall of Fame in 2012.
Tom Jones era (1972–1973) Tom Jones was hired as Troy State's head coach in 1972. He served as the head football coach from 1972 to 1973, compiling a record of 11–7–2. In addition to his head coaching duties Jones also served as the Troy University Athletic Director from 1972 to 1974.
Byrd Whigham era (1974–1975) Byrd Whigham led the Troy Trojans football program for two seasons and his teams compiled a 12–8 record in his two seasons. Whigham departed after the 1975 season.
Charlie Bradshaw era (1976–1982) Former Kentucky head coach Charlie Bradshaw came out of retirement in 1976 to accept the position of head coach for the Trojans, which had become the school's nickname just a short time earlier. Under Bradshaw's tutelage, the Trojans compiled a 41–27–2 record, which included three eight-win seasons and one conference championship. However, a 3–7 campaign in 1981 and a 2–8 season in 1982 ended Bradshaw's tenure at Troy State.
Chan Gailey era (1983–1984)
In 1983, Chan Gailey took over the head coaching duties at Troy State, where he led the Trojans to a 12–1 record in 1984 en route to the Division II championship. Gailey departed Troy State after two seasons to accept the position of tight ends coach and special teams coordinator with the NFL's Denver Broncos.
Rick Rhoades era (1985–1987) Rick Rhoades, previously the Trojans' defensive coordinator, was the head coach at Troy State from 1985 to 1987. In 1987, he led the team to the NCAA Division II Football Championship. Rhoades left Troy State after three seasons.
Robert Maddox era (1988–1990) At Troy State, head coach Robert Maddox inherited a team which the previous season had gone 12–1–1, winning the NCAA Division II Football Championship. Despite this, in 1988, Troy State had its first losing season since 1982, going 4–6. The following season, the team showed little improvement, finishing with an identical 4–6 record. In 1990, Troy State improved slightly to 5–5, and Maddox resigned following a season-ending 24–23 win over Nicholls State.cfbdatawarehouse.com, Troy State Yearly Results 1980–1984 , 1985–1989 , 1990–1994 , retrieved March 2, 2008; "Colonels lose; Troy coach quits", The Advocate, November 11, 1990.
Larry Blakeney era (1991–2014) Larry Blakeney became the twentieth head football coach at Troy State UniversityThe school did not become Troy University until 2004. on December 3, 1990. The program was officially still a Division II program, but were already approved to transition to NCAA Division I-AA the following season. He took over a program that won two national championships the previous decade, but were 13–17 the previous 3 years.
The first full year at Division I-AA, the Troy State Trojans made it to the semifinal game and finished 12–1–1, 10–0–1 in the regular season. This marked the first undefeated, regular, full season of Troy State Trojans football and they finished ranked first in the end of season poll by Sports Network. In 1995, the team improved on that record finishing 11–0 in the regular season for the first undefeated and untied season in history. During the eight seasons the team was a member of I-AA football, they made the playoffs seven seasons and won the Southland Conference championship three times and made the playoff semifinals twice.
Troy State transitioned to Division I-A in 2001. During that season they defeated three Division I-A schools, including their first win over a BCS conference school, Mississippi State. The transition makes Blakeney one of two coaches to ever take a football team from Division II to I-A (the other is UCF's Gene McDowell).
In 2004, Troy's first year in the Sun Belt Conference, Blakeney coached his team to one of the biggest victories in the school's and the Sun Belt's history after defeating then No. 17 ranked Missouri 24–14 at home, in front of a national audience on ESPN2. He once again coached his team to a victory over a BCS school in 2007 at home, routing Oklahoma State 41–23 on ESPN2
After losing the 2008 New Orleans Bowl in overtime against Southern Miss and losing the 2010 GMAC Bowl in double-overtime against Central Michigan, Blakeney would get his second bowl victory in the 2010 New Orleans Bowl, defeating Ohio 48–21.
ESPN recognized Blakeney as one of the top 5 non-AQ recruiting closers in 2009.
Troy University football began playing in the NCAA's Division I-A in 2001, became a football only member of the Sun Belt Conference in 2004, and joined that conference for all other sports in 2005. The Trojan football team made its first bowl game appearance in the Silicon Valley Football Classic on December 30, 2004, that same season, but lost to Northern Illinois, 34–21. In 2006, Troy won the Sun Belt Conference for the first time after defeating Middle Tennessee in dramatic fashion in the last game of the 2006 season in a game that is now referred to as "The Miracle in Murfreesboro". As the 2006 Sun Belt Conference champions, Troy played in the New Orleans Bowl on December 22, 2006, against Rice University, routing the Owls of Conference USA by a score of 41–17. The New Orleans Bowl victory was Troy's first bowl victory in history.
Under Blakeney's tutelage, many quarterbacks at Troy University broke school records and some national records. From 2010 to 2013, Corey Robinson broke the school record for career passing yards and is ranked No. 11 in the NCAA for all-time career passing yards with 13,477. One of his more memorable performances came the first game of his senior year when he rallied his team from a 31–17 deficit vs. UAB to a 34–31 OT win, in the process breaking Steve Sarkisian's record for highest completion percentage in a game with a minimum of 30 attempts. Robinson completed 30 of 32 attempts for a new record of 93.8%.
Upon Robinson's graduation, new freshman quarterback Brandon Silvers stepped in and set yet another national record in 2014. During Silvers' freshman campaign, he broke Sam Bradford's 2007 Oklahoma NCAA record for completion percentage by a freshman as he completed 70.5 percent of his passes (191-of-271); whereas Bradford had completed 69.5 percent of his attempts.
Blakeney officially retired at the end of the 2014 season. He led the program to three Southland Football League titles and five straight Sun Belt Conference titles, as well as guided the Trojans to seven FCS playoff appearances and four FBS bowl games. Blakeney finished with an overall record of 178–113–1 as head coach at Troy. Blakeney is the winningest coach in the Troy University history and he is the fifth winningest collegiate coach all-time in the state of Alabama, only behind greats Bear Bryant, Nick Saban, Cleve Abbott, and Ralph Jordan.
Neal Brown era (2015–2018) Kentucky offensive coordinator Neal Brown, who had served in the same capacity at Troy from 2008 to 2009, was named the Trojans head coach in November 2014. In 2015, Brown's Trojans posted a 4–8 record. Troy was ranked for the first time in the AP top 25 on November 13, 2016, they became the first team from the Sun Belt Conference to be ranked in the Top 25 and finished the year with a record of 10–3. Troy capped off the 2016 season by defeating Ohio in the Dollar General Bowl in Mobile, Alabama.
In Brown's third season at the helm in 2017, he led Troy to a fast 3–1 start to begin the season. In the fifth game of the season on September 30, Troy faced No. 25-ranked LSU. After leading in the third quarter by a score of 24–7, the LSU Tigers began to mount a comeback in the fourth quarter by scoring 14 unanswered points and trailing just 24–21 with less than 30 seconds left in the game. LSU began to move the ball down-field before having only 8 seconds left on the clock. The very next play wound up being an interception for Troy, which sealed the upset victory. The win over LSU snapped the Tigers' 46-game non-conference home winning streak, which was the longest such streak in the country at the time. Ironically LSU's last non-conference home loss came to another Alabama school UAB 13–10 back in 2000. The Trojans would wind up winning the Sun Belt title after defeating Arkansas State in a thriller, 32–25. Afterward, Troy met North Texas in the New Orleans Bowl, with Troy defeating the Mean Green by a score of 50–30. Troy's 11–2 overall record is the programs best season finish since joining the FBS in 2001.