College football is exclusionary.
It is an organization dominated by the large, wealthy schools with prestigious programs. Major conferences determine the field for the national championship with their automatic BCS bids, while schools from smaller conferences are left on the fringe of the sport.
There is indeed no place for the underdog. Upset wins are aberrations, and the notoriety they bring lasts no more than a week.
After this last weekend, football coaches from across the NCAA are now paying close attention to the Mid-American Conference. Northern Illinois has defeated two ranked teams in 2003, opening its season with an upset over then-No. 15 ranked Maryland at home, only to follow that by traveling to Tuscaloosa to defeat No. 21 Alabama.
Toledo downed No. 11 Pittsburgh Saturday, while Marshall took out No. 6 Kansas State in Manhattan. Bowling Green defeated Purdue two weeks ago and almost took the head off the defending national champion Ohio State Buckeyes last Saturday, falling 24-17.
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Wisconsin head coach Barry Alvarez said. “It doesn’t surprise me at all that it happens every week. It just so happens that Northern (Illinois) plays more of our brand of football than some of the other ones. Some of the other (MAC teams) can throw it and play pretty decent defense, and they have done it every year … they’ve done it forever, and there’s just more of them now, and there’s more and more parity.
“You get a couple of guys injured or you get a couple of bad recruiting classes, and then you have a team that’s a senior-dominated team like Northern (Illinois), and they’ll match up with anyone.”
Alvarez should be very familiar with the MAC. His Badgers narrowly escaped NIU in 2002 while gutting out a 48-31 victory in a shootout against Akron earlier this season.
With so many close games and now a list of upsets to its credit, it’s about time the MAC gets its due. After its two wins over ranked teams, Northern Illinois received a No. 20 ranking in the AP poll while notching a No. 22 ranking in the Coaches poll.
“These types of things happen when you beat two top-ten teams,” Marshall head coach Bob Pruett said Monday. “If you see the votes and things that (the MAC) are getting in the Coaches’ Poll and the AP (poll) … that’s four or five teams in the MAC getting a whole lot of respect, and deservedly so.”
Rankings aside, the wins this past weekend for NIU, Marshall and Toledo may go down as aberrations in annals of college football, but for the coaches and players of these teams it’s something that they can take pride in and carry the momentum into their next games and into the MAC regular season.
“I can’t explain how huge this win is for our program,” said Toledo wide receiver Lance Moore, who caught the game-winning touchdown in the Rockets’ 35-31 shocker against Pittsburgh.
“We are on the right path, and we are getting better every week. This win is exciting for the players in the locker room. We play football in championship situations like this. We were able to overcome adversity, and we prevailed. This tells a lot about Toledo, our staff and our players, and we will never give up.”
For NIU head coach Joe Novak, the Huskies’ 19-16 victory over Alabama was just as sweet.
“This was my biggest (win),” Novak said. “Before I got into coaching, I was a football fan. You talk Alabama, and you’re talking one of the best. Beating Maryland at home was fantastic, but coming to a place like this, a great situation, great stadium and great fans and great tradition, it’s a memory our kids or I will never forget. Our kids believed they could win.”
Believing in yourself is one thing, but making the powers that be in the NCAA believers in the MAC conference is another.
As it stands, the NCAA’s six major conferences (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, SEC, Pac 10 and Big XII) get automatic BCS bids. There are two at-large bids open to the rest of college football. At 3-0, the NIU Huskies are gunning for one of those at-large bids. With wins over two top-25 teams and a meeting with Iowa State Saturday, the Huskies could come out unscathed after an impressive non-conference schedule.
A senior-dominated team, NIU has one of the greatest weapons in college football in Michael “The Burner” Turner, the nation’s rushing leader from last season. The senior recorded for 156 yards on 27 carries for the Huskies in their victory over the Crimson Tide.
“The guy I compare him to is Bo Jackson,” Alabama defensive coordinator Joe Kines said of Turner. “He is not a little scat-back. He’s not a big, lumbering fullback. The hype around him and the Heisman Trophy is legitimate. He’s got power, speed, strength and good eyes –everything you want in a running back.”
With the availability of playing time presented to sophomores, and many times freshmen, at smaller schools like those in the MAC, more and more high school athletes will bite on schools like NIU and Bowling Green rather than riding the bench at Ohio State or Texas.
Turner, along with Akron’s Charlie Frye, Ball State’s Dante Ridgeway and Miami’s Ben Roethlisberger are all players that could have eventually found spots on bigger schools but have instead found their niches in the MAC.
As this trend continues, conferences like the MAC will just get stronger, and the rest of college football and the BCS will have to adjust.
