Big Sky might erase big sighs
A few of college football’s charming trophy games are sprinkled through the weekend schedule. Kent State and Bowling Green meet for the Anniversary Award. Utah State and BYU continue their state’s Beehive Boot round-robin. And Notre Dame and Michigan State play for the Megaphone – providing Irish coach Charlie Weis isn’t using it to remind everyone that he’s a genius.
And in Bozeman, Eastern Washington and Montana State settle the Scarlet Letter.
Loser wins.
Roommates in the Big Sky Conference penthouse last season, the Eagles and Bobcats have been relocated to the Punch line Suite. You may have heard something about it.
The Eagles, after playing happy meal for BCS carnivores Oregon State and West Virginia, returned home last Saturday presuming to fill their bellies on one-time rival Central Washington, an NCAA Division II team. Instead, it was the upset stomach special: CWU 21, EWU 14. First time the Eagles have lost to Central since 1977, though coach Paul Wulff’s reference goes back only 13 years.
“But it’s absolutely the worst game on that field since I’ve been here,” he acknowledged.
MSU, meanwhile, has become college football’s poster child for achievement both over and under. The Bobcats opened the season with a 19-10 stunner over Colorado, then belly-flopped at home against Division II Chadron State. Coach Mike Kramer had a good line to sum it up – “We fell in the ditch on a paved road” – but ESPN Radio didn’t give him a national audience after that one, nor after last week’s 45-zip undressing at the hands of UC Davis, also at home.
Never have two coaches been so happy to see the Big Sky season begin.
But such is the price of the class warfare that September has evolved into for the plucky schools of Division I-AA, the rock-and-hard-place of college football. Step up for a paycheck, step back down to get well – and hope that your entire team doesn’t come down with terminal hubris in the transition.
Because losing to a D-II, well, it’s simply the end of the world.
OK, not really. But college football, perhaps more than any other sport, is beholden to the notion of who is supposed to win. Pro football has all that dreadful parity. A hot goalie, a dominating pitcher, a shooter in a zone – all can take over the other popular games and carry an underdog to an upset, and it happens every other night.
But the football team with 85 scholarships is supposed to annihilate the one with 63, which is supposed to bury the one with 36. No alibis.
That’s what the public thinks, anyway. Chances are, a 19-year-old kid in pads and cleats shares the opinion.
“For some reason,” Wulff said, “we thought we could just walk on the field and win and that makes me sick to my stomach.”
But it’s going around. Already this season, five I-AA teams – MSU, Portland State, Southern Illinois, New Hampshire and Richmond – have knocked off I-A opponents, after it happened just twice last year. But, of course, the odds are better. In 2005, there were just 19 such games. Then the I-A schedule went from 11 to 12 games – the better to get into your pocket – so this year there will be 73. Portland State is playing three of them.
Still, the D-II upsets occur even more often – even if you limit the I-AA victims to those schools that use their full allotment of scholarships, or nearly. Northern Iowa, last year’s I-AA national runner-up, just lost to North Dakota. South Dakota State even found itself humbled by Division III Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Wulff might be sickened, but he’s not necessarily surprised.
“The talent level gets closer,” he said. “Depending on the school, the team you play might have a lot of transfers. Central had a quarterback who was at WSU, for instance, and a defensive back who’d been at Arizona. And when you have certain areas of inexperience, it can really bite you. The experienced Division II kid might be better.
“One thing I’ll say in recruiting is that if a kid gets an opportunity to play, it’s better to go and play at a place for four years than maybe a bigger place where you might not play until you’re a junior – because you’re going to be a lot better player by playing on Saturdays.”
And in the end, Wulff said, “I’m embarrassed about how we played, not who we lost to.”
Alas, the winds of current culture blow the other way. Everybody loves a winner, but loves to ridicule a failure even more. MSU beat Colorado, but the story was the Buffs losing. Eastern falling to its in-state cousin stings considerably and plays in public even worse, and coupled with the routs from weeks 1 and 2 could end up defining the season.
Unless, of course, the Eagles somehow butt in on the Big Sky title chase.
“But that’s not realistic right now,” Wulff admitted. “Until we can win a play, then win a series, then a quarter and then a half and then a game, it doesn’t matter. Boy, we’d better deal with just the next play in practice than think about anything else.”
Meanwhile, we’ll ponder bigger questions: Who wins if Central plays Chadron?