I know, right?  You are likely looking at your fingers and counting off…Ball State, don’t care about them.  Utah?  Care a little, but not really?  Where are the other 9?  NCAA Football runs a little deeper than the Saturday morning tailgates and games under the lights we see on TV.  Outside of the Division I Bowl teams, there are many undefeated teams left that matter to some people.

A few weeks ago I was watching my Alma Mater, The University of Dubuque Spartans, getting stomped by the in town arch rival, Loras College Duhawks (what the hell is a Duhawk?).  While watching the game I looked around at the crowd.  I had attended many games at Chalmers Field where Uof Dubuque plays their home games.  I had never attended an “Away” game (even though this “Away” game is only a matter of about two miles, if that).  There were 3242 in attendance that day.  Well, that is the number for those who paid to get in.  There were about another 75 outside the fence with a good view, including myself and my kids until halftime when they quit charging.  It got me thinking…there are hundreds of College football games every weekend that nobody cares about…but there are friends, family and small school students that are there, cheering them on.

Outside of the yard where the Big Dogs play in the NCAA there is a lot more football to be had.  You may have heard about it.  It’s where they have Playoffs and that team Appalachian State.  The NCAA Banner goes over not only Division I Bowl and Division I Championship, it goes down to Division II and Division III.  So let’s take a look at some of those teams that not only most people do not know are undefeated, but those that most don’t know exist…some in towns we don’t know exist.  Where they matter to someone.

Division II

#1 Grand Valley State Lakers 10-0
Allendale, MI

From MLive.com

For the second consecutive year, Grand Valley State quarterback Brad Iciek is one of eight finalists in the voting for the Harlon Hill Trophy.

Iciek, a junior from Grandville, finished seventh in the voting last year for the award that recognizes the top football player in Division II.

#2 Abilene Christian Wildcats 10-0
Abilene, TX

From ReporterNews.com

DeWitt Jones believes the Abilene Christian University football team can win a national title. He should know what it takes, too. Jones was the ACU head coach the last time the Wildcats won a national title, claiming the NAIA crown in 1977.

UPDATE!: Rondo from the Sports Jabber Forums tells us today…

Well, WT slapped 68 points on Abilene Christian today. One problem with that: WT got beat by 25 points. That’s right–Final Score:
Abilene Christian 93, WTAMU 68. Reports of a defensive slugfest have been grossly exaggerated! LOL!

#6 Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs 11-0
Duluth, MN

From Waow.com

Schlafke, a senior at the University of Minnesota-Duluth has been a fixture at quarterback the last four seasons, starting all 43 games.  So far this year the former SPASH Panther owns the third best passing efficiency mark in Division II and ranks first among NCIS quarterbacks in completion percentage.

You know how they say that a college playoff won’t work?  We know that conferences and teams that are not involved in big money TV deals and Bowl games make it happen.  HERE is the playoff bracket for Division II.

Look!  There is ANOTHER playoff bracket!  This one is for Division III.

Division III

Mount Union Purple Raiders  10-0
Alliance, OH

From www2.muc.edu

The Purple Raiders have the best winning percentage and most wins in all of college football since 1990 (229-11-1/.955).
The Raiders also hold college football’s all-time consecutive win streak (55) - for games played from Sept. ‘00 to Dec. ‘03.
In the last 161 regular season games, dating back to the beginning of the ‘92 season, MTU has an 159-2 mark.

North Central Cardinals 10-0
Naperville, IL

Monmouth Fighting Scots 10-0
Monmouth, IL

Millsaps Majors 10-0
Jackson, MS

From wjtv.com

After missing out on the playoffs a year ago behind a pair of agonizing defeats, the 4th-ranked Millsaps College Majors are in the NCAA Division III Playoffs for the third time in school history and second time in three years as announced Sunday afternoon by the NCAA Football Committee.

Millsaps (10-0, 7-0 Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference) earned one of 23 automatic bids given by the NCAA.

Willamette Bearcats 10-0
Salem, OR

Occidental Tigers 9-0
Los Angeles, CA

***Willamette and Occidental will face Nov. 22nd in the playoffs so one of them will fall.

Case Western Reserve Spartans 10-0
Cleveland, OH

From Cleveland.com

The Case Western Reserve University football team did not bust out in a full-blown celebration when the NCAA Division III playoff pairings were announced Sunday afternoon. That’s because the undefeated Spartans (10-0) have a year of expectations under their belts.

Instead, when it was announced CWRU would once again host Wabash (Ind.) College at noon Saturday at Case Field, the feeling was one of unfinished business. The Little Giants (9-1), champions of the North Coast Athletic Conference and a No. 6 seed, defeated the Spartans, 38-23, in the second round a year ago.

Trine Thunder 10-0
Angola, IN

Riding a strong defensive effort and timely offense, Trine clinched its first-ever Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association football championship with a 9-0 victory over the Adrian College Bulldogs at the AC Performance Stadium Nov.8.

Trine (9-0, 6-0 MIAA) won the conference title in just its fifth year in the league, and four years after it posted a 0-10 season. The Thunder, ranked No. 24 in the D3Football.com poll, also gained the MIAA’s automatic berth in the NCAA Division III football playoffs, which begin Nov. 22.

The Big Ten Network is going to find itself in more homes after an agreement has been reached with Comcast .  The state of Iowa will continue to suffer at the mercy of the evil empire that is Mediacom.

Because penalties for breaking the rules in the NCAA do not reflect more losses for teams breaking the rules, said penalties are not effective according to Chad McEvoy, coordinator of the sports management program at Illinois State University.

“It seems unlikely that the NCAA’s penalty structure has any real value as a deterrent,” his report concluded. “If the penalties aren’t penal, why should programs follow the rules?”

The new UNLV uniforms make them look like something out of a non-Madden video game.

The Notre Dame/NBC saga continues…

BYU demands respect, Damnit!  Hand it over or they will go win the BCS title!

Oregon State is an underdog once again.

Scout.com ranking 1 to 1000.  Good stuff here if you like to keep up on recruits!

Flood damage repair has began on the stadium in Indiana.

Yes, it’s that time again. Time to talk College Football Playoffs. Florida State President T.K Wetherell piped up about it last week at a Football Issues forum. Wetherell is convinced that at a minimum a “Plus One” playoff is going to eventually happen. Why? Money. Wasn’t money the reason not to have it you ask? It appears Wetherell is pointing at the gas pump as a reason that schools will lose money when playing throw away games.

“How am I going to get people to drive from Miami to Tallahassee, Fla., with gas at four dollars a gallon, to watch us play UT-Chattanooga?” Wetherell said Friday.

So what we could be looking at is teams losing money traveling to a stadium that is not filling it’s seats. So how can the Schools fix this? Teams that make the “Plus One” mini tournament essentially are getting two Bowl Games, right? $$$$!

You talk to ABC and ESPN, you’re talking something in the neighborhood of the Final Four type thing (for a playoff),” Wetherell said. “That’s a huge amount of money. We’ll (presidents) run out of money, then we’ll figure out a way to do it. The fight won’t be over whether to do it or not, the fight will be over the take, the split.”

What about those kids and their studies? You surely cannot expect that Football Players can maintain their grades and do this, right?

“In my judgment, if you take every argument that’s been made today and apply it to any other sport on a college campus, then you’d have to cancel the (College) World Series, the Final Four, the soccer tournament,” he said. “If you want to do it, it can be done. …

“Everybody’s going to be sitting here — I don’t know, probably not in my lifetime at Florida State — saying, `You know, we really could move this back. And, by the way, we do play 63 baseball games and we play baseball through two final-exam periods, not one. Somehow, they all seem to graduate and do pretty good. Oh, those basketball players, we have a real problems with academics in basketball, but we seem to play right on through the tournament.”‘

It’s very interesting to hear Wetherell discuss the finances of the situation. We are not supposed to know that is an issue…it’s all about tradition, right?

It seems so simple to have two teams play ONE MORE WEEK. Wait! BCS, BCS! You could still use the BCS and the other Bowl Games could still be played. You just take some of that arguing out of whether or not the #3 team should have been in there. But it’s not fair that the top two teams should have to play another game? There is usually an argument that it isn’t fair at least one of those two teams shouldn’t be in the top 2. If they truly deserve to be there, winning one more game should not be an issue, right?

Ahhhh, everyone has their own take on it. I found this a little extreme of an opinion on it but a pretty comical comparision. This is from dirtysheets at the CBS Sports Community…

Without a playoff, I really wouldn’t consider college football a “sport”. It’s more in the area of competitive cheerleading and figure skating, where sure, the participants have to perform well, but in the end, too many other factors can determine the overall winners. Voters and money are more important to college football than the game itself.

Writing this it occurred to me that there used to be an option in the EA Sports NCAA game to end the year with a Championship game or a tournament. Makes me wonder who had the influence on that disappearing. Seems to me it would still be a nice feature to give the user the choice…

Drag and Drop what you would like to see happen in College Football…

At Florida’s Spring Game, Chris Rainey had a showing that may land him as the starting RB. USC transfer Emmanuel Moody, not so much…

“He’s not very good with ball security, and he won’t play tailback at Florida with poor ball security,” Urban Meyer said. “He’s very talented. You saw some great runs. … He’s got talent but there’s no chance you’ll see him play  regardless of what dot com says and all the e-mails I get and everything else, he will not play football if there’s a chance he’ll lay it on the ground.”

Linebacker U is going to be short a LB. Penn State’s expected D Captain, Sean Lee, tore his ACL in practice.

“I have a responsibility to the team to help do everything I can this year in what might be a non-conventional way,” Lee said in a school news release. “I have to turn this into a positive. It’s a bump in the road. I’m excited about the team we have and the kind of season we can have. It’s a great opportunity for a young guy.”

Murray State QB, Jeff Ehrardt was arrested after taking up a $20 bet that he wouldn’t take a campus cop’s ticket book.

Check out the 2008 Big Ten Spring Football Prospectus. If your a Big Ten Fan and the forum type, go register at Big Ten Fever.

This is a few days old but if your into the annual discussion on College Football Playoffs, have a read from Fox Sports. After the Final Four in basketball, as usual, the question comes up if football should go to a playoff or Plus One set up.

…and coming in at 94 days old but listed as latest news on the BCS site is the AP article on BCS officials giving serious thought to a Plus One format.

If you want to relive last years title game you can watch the highlights HERE.

NOTE: Keep an eye out on our Vod Pod for videoness. You can watch videos right here at Football Jabber by using the widget on the sidebar (browse using the little arrows) or hitting the video link in the above menu.
Videos added today:

Tim Tebow on New Expectations.

College Gameday on NCAA story lines.

College Gameday Big 12 Preview.

tag: NCAA Football, College Football, footballjabber.com, Florida, Penn State, Murray State, College Football Live, Video, BCS, Big 10, Big 12, Tebow

Discuss the NFL, NCAA Football, and Fantasy Football. Find a league or owners for your league. Also, if you would like to have a free password protected forum for your league, surrounded by the awesomeness that will be the Football Jabber forums, hit the contact link above and shoot me one of those electronic messages and let’s talk!

FOOTBALL BLOGGERS! Feel free to sign up and post your content!

JOIN THE FOOTBALL JABBER FORUMS NOW!

• This post was edited for the latest batch of forums on 5/23/08

tag: NFL, NCAA Football, College Football, Forums, Message board, Community, NFL Draft, Fantasy Football, footballjabber.com

Each day there will be a scoreboard there on the sidebar giving the results from the previous day. You can also then take the link from the scoreboard to play each day. How fun is that?

Questions are made up of NFL and NCAA flava. Bring it Jabber Heads!

Here is the short version…

Iam4Mizzou offered to sell the domain years ago to the University and they were not interested. Now they threaten to sue. Check out the site and start reading at January 15th, 2008. The saga begins.

I’m sorry but I’m just cracking up as I read this stuff over. I’m not a lawyer (Iam4Mizzou is) but I thought you could sell domain names…and people could buy them. The Dallas Cowboys backed out of buying a Cowboys related domain last year because the price was too steep. Why didn’t Jerry Jones just reach in and rip their cyber heart out and take the domain name?

Check this out too…Scroll Down

Kick in the shin to Big 12 FanBlogs for bringing my attention to this.

tag: college, football, Missouri, missouritigers.com, ncaa, university, kitty

The Senior Bowl is coming. If your one of those with the NFL Network you can catch the prospects in action this weekend. Kickoff is at 4pm ET. Let’s do a little link dump, shall we?

Official Site

Rosters

Video Previews on NFL.com

Path to the Draft: Senior QB’s

2008 Senior Bowl: Colt Brennan

Colt Brennan Interview

Leodis McKelvin Interview

2008 Senior Bowl: Donnie Avery

2008 Senior Bowl: Andre Woodson

Path to the Draft: Senior WR’s and CB’s recap

2008 Senior Bowl: Jordy Nelson

2008 Senior Bowl: Gosder Cherilus

2008 Senior Bowl: Dan Connor

tag: NFL, Football, Draft, NCAA, College, Senior Bowl, Video, NFL Network, Connor, Cherilus, Nelson, Woodson, Avery, McKelvin, Brennan

Here are the rosters in pdf format…

East Roster

West Roster

Check out those possible Dynasty and Keeper Fantasy Draft Prospects!
tag: Football, College, NCAA, Fantasy, Shrine, East, West, TV, ESPN2

I had been checking your blog out for sometime and I’m kind of bummed that I didn’t pay more attention to The FanYard site more during the season. Go ahead, Pimp away. What is FanYard all about?

FanYard is a sports social network centered around making game predictions. Fans can make their own predictions on NFL and NCAAF games and NBA and college basketball games and are ranked each week on their ability to make accurate predictions. For each game, FanYard aggregates all the predictions to produce the Yardstick, the community consensus of who is the favorite to win and by how many points. This is a unique alternative to the controversial sports gambling related point-spread, one which put the game predictions in the hand of knowledgeable sports fans.

Do you measure how accurate the majority is against the outcome of the game?

For this NFL regular season that just ended, FanYard users correctly predicted the winners of more NFL football games than all but one of the experts from ESPN, Yahoo! and CBSSportsline. The one expert to beat fanyard was Matt Schlereth at ESPN. Then again, he has three Super Bowl rings, a couple trips to the Pro Bowl and he wore the number 69, so he knows a thing or two about getting on top.

How long has FanYard been going?

We started just before the beginning of the 2007 NFL season.

Any plans of change in the works?

We’ll be adding more sports, groups and group competitions, among smaller things like moving the FanYard blog to our own servers.