#1: St. Francis College Cougars (6-0, 41.500 average margin of victory) - An NAIA powerhouse, and one of the most consistently super destructive small college teams in America, the Cougars, fighting out of Ft. Wayne, Indiana, having gone unbeaten the past five regular seasons. They won 102 games in their football program's first decade, which is only in it's 11th year. Mostly, they take the leftovers of prominent Indianapolis area high school players once Division I schools get done offering scholarships, and run roughshod through their conference. They have never won an NAIA title though, losing the title game three of the past four years.
#2: Abilene Christian University Wildcats ( 6-0, 40.833 avg. victory) - Your biggest college football game of the weekend? It is in the NCAA's Division II, where 3rd ranked Abilene Christian travels to Canyon, Texas, to take on the 4th ranked West Texas A&M Buffaloes, both members of the Lone Star Conference's Southern Division. A&M's won two out of the past three meetings, including two years ago in the Division II playoffs. The Wildcats are a scoring juggernaut though, having scored seven TDs on defense alone the past five games. If I had a stupid satellite TV still, I'd probably try to find this game, only to be stuck with like 23 stupid I-AA games from the northeast instead.
#3: University of Sioux Falls Cougars (6-0, 39.500 avg. victory) - The Cougars are ranked second in the NAIA right now, and are a perennial power there. I'm not sure really why NAIA schools are in the NAIA instead of like NCAA Division III. I know the NAIA basketball tournament used to be some sort of grand old thing in Kansas City years ago, where old black men would sit around and talk about triple lindys or double clutch reverses or whatever. I guess I've always assumed it was some sort of God thing, since that's usually why private schools are private instead of public, to get all Godly on motherfuckers. But I'm not sure if that's how it works in the NAIA. It might just be a bunch of NCAA contrarians.
#4: Mount Union College Purple Raiders (5-0, 38.400 avg. victory) - I can tell you right now that most likely by the end of the year, Mount Union will be on top of this list. There has never been a college juggernaut like them. They went for five or six years in NCAA Division III without losing a game, most of them not even close. Well shit, just last week, the #4 ranked team in Div. III came to town, and was smoked 21-0 in the first quarter. Final score was 49 to 7. They just don't fuck around. I think they've actually even got a couple of players in the NFL on practice squads, which, for a Division III school, is amazing. It's odd too, because it's not like Div. III just takes delinquents that usually can't meet eligibility parameters for higher levels; it's mostly just white dudes with no scholarships whatsoever. But them white boys can play some football.
#5: Morningside College Mustangs (5-0, 38.400 avg. victory) - Morningside is 5th ranked in the NAIA, and in the same conference as Sioux Falls, so those two will face-off, hopefully both unbeaten, the second week of November. Sioux Falls, South Dakota's small ass college football team versus Sioux City, Iowa's small ass college football team... I bet there will be hella frat parties with drunk sluts that weekend.
#6: University of Minnesota at Duluth Bulldogs (7-0, 35.429 avg. victory) - 9th ranked team in NCAA's Division II, but more famous for their hockey team, which is one of the NCAA's best. Having growed up in Virginia, it's really odd to even imagine a college hockey team, much less them having actual players who came to that college specifically to play hockey. My buddy Loftin used to play on the Virginia Commonwealth University inter-mural team (or whatever the fuck it was) and they had PBR jerseys and basically just gave themselves an excuse to fight with kids from UVA on top of frozen water a couple of times a year.
#7: North Alabama Lions (7-0, 35.143 avg. victory) - NCAA Division II's #2 ranked team, and another perennial small college powerhouse. They always seem to be in the later rounds of Div. II playoffs. They are actually playing Delta State tonight on some satellite channels in ultra-special Thursday night football action. It is sure to be a thousand times more exciting than preseason NBA, and ten thousand times more exciting than a baseball game. Seriously, who the fuck can sit through a whole baseball game? The cliche is it's like watching paint dry, but I am a housepainter and can honestly say that I would find more joy in sitting there, noticing the subtle shade changes as wet liquid polymers started to harden upon drying, than actually trying to watch 9 innings of a baseball game. And extra innings? Holy fuck. I just hope it goes until the morning and I can catch an at-bat or two while I get ready for work.
#8: Grand Valley State University Lakers (6-0, 34.667 avg. victory) - The Lakers are the top-ranked team in Division II, and pretty much just fuck everybody up. They are, check the theme here, a constant top-tier team in Division II, and oddly enough, they are located in Michigan. I guess it being football and with a name like Grand Valley State, I would've assumed they were from Georgia or somewhere or another in the south. But no, they are Minnetonkans.
#9: Pennsylvania State University Nittany Lions (7-0, 34.286 avg. victory) - Affectionately known as Penn State, they are led by their 112-year-old coach Joe Paterno, who is half-blind, and also half-crippled from trying to teach kids 80 years younger than him how to do an effective onsides kick.There are murmurs that, even though he wants to keep on coaching, Penn State might not renew Joe Pa's contract at the end of the year, just because, fuck his old ass. It seems a shame. When a guy can stay relevant to gangsta thug 2008 football blue-chippers and still wear some old school ass Hank Schram eyeglasses like he's about to drive a truck to go shoot Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, you should just prop him up in the booth upstairs and let him coach until he's clinically dead.
#10: Monmouth, Illinois, Fighting Scots (6-0, 33.167 avg. victory) - I am feeling lazy, and all the stupid Monmouth searches I did came up with some punk ass college in New Jersey, probably because the internet is a form of entertainment, thus controlled secretly by Jews. They did crush a team 69 to 0 two weeks ago though.
#11: Millsaps College Majors (6-0, 33.167 avg. victory) - Another Division III ass-kicker, and this one confused me too with their name. I would've pegged Millsaps as some nice ass liberal arts private school in the eastern midwest, like Pennsylvania or Ohio. But no, it's in fucking Jackson, Mississippi. I have always worked under the impression Division III college football (as well as any sport really) means white boys galore. It's kinda funny to think of a bunch of white guy playing football at a small college in Jackson, Mississippi, and considering themselves good. I wonder if they could even beat like the local multi-cultural (that means everything plus white boys) high school all-stars?
#12: Wabash College Bears (5-0, 32.800 avg. victory) - Wabash is having a good season, but playoffs and all that mean nothing compared to their end-of-the-regular-season game against DePauw University, one of the oldest in college football. They've played 114 times before this year, with Wabash winning one more than DePauw in the history of this game. The winner of the annual showdown on November 15th becomes the proud owner of the Monon Bell - a locomotive bell. It's the oldest rivalry west of the Alleghanies, and before college football instituted overtime, in the event of ties, the previous winner retained the bell. In 1992, when Wabash settled for a game-tying field goal at the end of the game rather than push for a winning touchdown, so that they could hold onto the bell for another year. Shit like that is funny, and why small-time college football is so great. Also, the rural Indiana frat parties with mad drunken sluts attached to it.
#13: University of Texas Longhorns (6-0, 31.500 avg. victory) - You might know of these guys. They beat Oklahoma in a really exciting game last week, and are the new #1 in college football. You are #6. Texas is also notable for their QB being TV's The Fall Guy. Also, a guy named Major Applewhite was their QB, but only like ten years ago, not the one hundred and fifty years ago you would've assumed from his name.
#14: Otterbein Cardinals (5-0, 31.200 avg. victory) - Otterbein, having a great season, is an afterthought in their own Ohio Athletic Conference in Division III. Why, you ask? Because the aforementioned Mount Union dominators are in the same conference. If Otterbein can win their next three games though, they'll get to host Mount Union on November 8th in Westerville, Ohio, and try to unsettle the Kings of Small College Footballs.
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