What happened to the Wilmington Tigers football team?

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — The Wilmington Tigers have been part of the Wilmington sports scene for more than a decade. It’s late July. It’s typically the time of year the season begins for the Wilmington Tigers. Where are they? Where is the football team?

2015 appears to be the year of restructuring for the Wilmington Tigers. The Mason Dixon League semipro pro football season is already underway, but you won’t find the Tigers when you look at the league standings. “We enjoy playing football. We’re just doing some restructuring right now as we try to get more players. We’re taking a year off” according to Hollis B. Briggs Jr. “The players that we had for eight years are tired now. We’re looking for fresh players.” Essentially the Tigers are looking for fresh players and a fresh start in 2016. “It’s a business. Whenever you’re doing a business it takes a certain amount of players to make the thing work. We did not have the right amount of players to make it work.”

Unfortunately the head coach position has been a revolving door for the Tigers since the death of longtime head coach William Murphy in 2009. “That’s the only thing that gives me chill bumps about not playing this year,” Hollis B. Briggs Jr told WWAY. “William Murphy put his whole heart into this team. As a matter of fact we would be playing if William Murphy were around because we would not have had any issues.”

Former NFL lineman Jay Ross served as the head coach of the Wilmington Tigers in 2014. Ross may end up coaching the team again in 2016, but discussions on that have yet to begin as the Tigers take their time on restructuring everything during their year of not fielding a team.

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