S14: Best College Football Teams

So I did this some last year during the college football season, and it allows me to wallow in my inner-number dork, especially on a day like today when I'm home because the wife is sick and then the oldest kid is sick and maybe the baby is sick and damn. So I may do this periodically this entire college football season, or I may do it this once and blow it off forever until another day in the unforeseeable future when I am homebound and bored silly but not able to properly focus my focus into something more tangible.
These, at this point in the fall, are the top 14 college football teams, from all four divisions of the NCAA plus the NAIA, which is some sort of outlaw college organization that refuses to get down with the rest of the regular college sports world. The methodology is simple - be undefeated, and then have ties broken by highest average margin of victory. And here is your list, as of October 11, 2009...

#1: SIOUX FALLS COUGARS (6-0, 52.333 avg. margin of victory) - The Cougars, defending NAIA Division II champs, are ranked #1 in that division now, and have run up a 74-1 record over the last 7 years. They are a small college powerhouse, perennial kingfishes of a small ass pond. Their closest game thus far this year was a 42 to 19 home game win against Hastings.

#2: MORNINGSIDE MUSTANGS (5-0, 44.200 avg. margin of victory) - Another NAIA juggernaut who, oddly enough, shares membership in the Great Plains Athletic Conference with Sioux Falls, which means should they both remain super destroyers of lesser competition, they will close out the regular season against each other, in Sioux City, Iowa, (home of Morningside in case you, like me, don't know the differences between midwestern Sioux territories).

#3: MONMOUTH FIGHTING SCOTS (6-0, 42.500 avg. margin of victory) - While some of us are just shifting into football high gear with the cooling of the air and dropping of the leaves in October, Division III college football is more than halfway done, with a 10-game season, and a clusterfuck of teams all over the country. Very few make the playoffs, so it's 10 and done oftentimes. The Fighting Scots of Monmouth, Illinois, have domineered the opposition thus far, and look to do much of the same all the way through to the DIII playoffs in November. In fact, the local paper, upon google news searching, is already talking up how Mount Union, the perennial King of Division III football, is likely to stand in the Fighting Scots' way come playoffs. DON'T LOOK AHEAD, ESPECIALLY WITH THE RIPON RED HAWKS ON THE ROAD IN WINTRY WISCONSIN THIS COMING SATURDAY!

#4: WITTENBERG TIGERS (5-0, 39.800 avg. margin of victory) - Wittenberg has scored less than 35 points a game only once this season (only put up 20 against Ohio Wesleyan), and has only allowed 16 points total all season long. I have often wondered at that Division III level, how do you build a menacing defense like that? I mean, you are recruiting from a certain level of player that won't go to bigger schools. Is it the leftovers from big high schools, or do they scour the smaller high schools for talent that's overlooked by bigger football programs?

#5: LINDENWOOD LIONS (6-0, 37.167 avg. margin of victory) - Yet another NAIA school, fighting out of St. Charles, Missouri, which honestly I can't even think of anything to say about. Apparently though, the biggest sporting event of the year for Lindenwood University is their yearly hockey game against Illinois. College sports is the best.

#6: WISCONSIN-WHITEWATER WARHAWKS (5-0, 36.800 avg. margin of victory) - I am a newspaper sports page agate fan, studying the stupid tiny font for retarded shit that doesn't really need to be in my brain. I remember always seeing different "Wisconsin-Whitewater" or "Wisconsin-Stevens Point" teams being listed in the Division III Top 20s, or playing each other. Well, in Division III, there is the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, composed of eight smaller branches of the University of Wisconsin academic system, who do battle amongst each other. The Warhawks in Whitewater are the cream of this little circle jerk, and are ranked #2 in the country in the NCAA's Division III.

#7: WABASH LITTLE GIANTS (5-0, 35.600 avg. margin of victory) - Oh snap, big shit going on this weekend in Crawfordsville, Indiana, as the undefeated Little Giants host their North Coast Athletic Conference rivals of Wittenberg (see above #4). You know Theta Chi's gonna be throwing down. Boomers for all!

#8: MARY HARDIN-BAYLOR CRUSADERS (5-0, 34.000 avg. margin of victory) - Nothing says small college football like deep Texas Bible college college football, as exemplified by the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, Texas, whose Crusaders football team is ranked 3rd in the country, with a schedule filled up with the likes of Southern Nazarene, Texas Lutheran, and East Texas Baptist. When your football schedule sounds like a preacher's tent revival resume, that's good shit. And when you have small college leftover football crazy Texans, probably black kids with heavy Jesus bents, it's only even better.

#9: ST. XAVIER COUGARS (7-0, 33.143 avg. margin of victory) - Another NAIA team, from Chicago, Illinois, who this past weekend, for only the second time this year, failed to score 50 points, only able to run it up on the Marian Knights 42 to 7 somewhere in Indianapolis, in the shadow of Peyton Manning's billboard display of Aww Shucksness.

#10: FLORIDA GATORS (5-0, 32.600 avg. margin of victory) - Hey, a team we all know finally! I actually watched a bit of their game against LSU, because the past two years I get more and more drawn into college football, probably because the Redskins suck eternally for the rest of Dan Snyder's life. I know Tim Tebow gets all the glory, from his Lord and the media, but damn, the Gators have a fucking gangsta ass defense. I did not expect that, as I thought they were spread offense wonderteam of point scoring destruction.

#11: TEXAS LONGHORNS (5-0, 32.200 avg. margin of victory) - Another familiar team that regular people know! Big yearly showdown coming up this weekend against Oklahoma, which hopefully will be on one of the four channels I get. By the way, in case you are a Congressmen reading this by chance (or Congressional aide), fuck y'all for this digital conversion bullshit. Why could I get channels with a digital box and antenna, and then when the switch happened, I lost half of them? This tells me analog signals are superior to digital ones and you guys fucking lied to my stupid ass again. Fuck you.

#12: NORTH ALABAMA LIONS (7-0, 32.000 avg. margin of victory) - Year in and year out, the University of North Alabama Lions, situated in scenic Florence, are an NCAA Division II national championship contender. This season is no aberration, as they are already up to a #2 ranking.

#13: WESLEY WOLVERINES (5-0, 30.200 avg. margin of victory) - Division III's Atlantic Central Football Conference is just four mid-Atlantic teams hodgepodged together. Wesley has some out-of-area games, including a year-ender against Ohio Dominican, that probably is geared to trying to make the Division III playoffs, which I would guess they might not even be invited to, even if they went undefeated and won such a shabby conference.

#14: ST. THOMAS TOMMIES (5-0, 30.200 avg. margin of victory) - The University of Saint Thomas football team, situated in St. Paul, has stormed out the gates toward the top of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. But the highly-touted St. Thomas Tommies will have to make that trip over to Collegeville, to take on the also undefeated conference rival University of Saint John Johnnies. That's right, somewhere in this America this coming Saturday afternoon, the Saint Thomas Tommies and Saint John Johnnies will have an epic showdown of undefeated proportions, where two small colleges come in, but only one leaves, and most of us wouldn't have ever known. Yet I bet there's more than a few people where this is gonna be the biggest event of their young lives. Shit like that is awesome, no?