The East Tennessee State Buccaneers football program is the intercollegiate American football team for East Tennessee State University (ETSU) located in Johnson City, Tennessee. The team was dormant from the end of the 2003 season until being reinstated for the 2015 season. They played all of their 2015 home games and all but one of their 2016 home games at Kermit Tipton Stadium before the opening of the new William B. Greene Jr. Stadium for the 2017 season. The remaining 2016 home game, against Western Carolina on September 17, was played at nearby Bristol Motor Speedway. Before ETSU dropped football, it competed in NCAA Division I as a Southern Conference (SoCon) football program. The revived program played as an independent in 2015 before returning to the SoCon in 2016.