Issue date: 9/17/09 Section: Sports

USC. Notre Dame. Ohio State. They're all great universities. Everyone knows about their famous graduates and their big name professors, right?

Nope.

The average football fan does not care at all about what goes on off the field. Fans will know how many football national championships each school has won. They'll know all about those schools famous alumni, like Joe Montana, Reggie Bush, Eddie George and the others who have donned those schools uniforms. These players have written their names into the history books, having won national awards and conference championships.

But that type of fame doesn't come easy: immortality demands, in most cases, that a team go undefeated the entire season.

Sure, teams playing in the toughest conferences, such as the SEC, could lose a game and still make a name for themselves. And given these teams have such a tough road ahead of them, it's only natural they schedule a few weaker opponents during the first weeks of the season, giving the big SEC teams a chew toy to bat around for a few hours.

Usually, these chew toys come in the form of the smaller D1 or sub-division schools-Appalachian State, Richmond, William and Mary, and even, yes, the Eastern Kentucky Colonels. The theory goes the bigger schools will stomp all over the smaller ones, and they'll get a nice confidence boost going into conference play.

But times are changing, and so is the skill level of those small fry schools.

Just ask the head coaches from Michigan, Duke, and Virginia. All three schools recently opened their seasons with big upsets at the hands of the small schools they brought in to squash.

Two years ago, the Michigan Wolverines scheduled small Appalachian State for their first game of the year. Little did they know that Appy State had a quarterback with a rocket arm and Michael Vick speed. Michigan was bettered that day, blocking a field goal on the last play of the game, sealing the victory. It was one of the greatest upsets of all time. So much for a tune up game and "an easy win."

An anomaly? A fluke win that wouldn't be seen again for another decade?

Nope.

This year, the upsets continued. On opening day, two more sub-division schools pulled off upsets over bigger ACC teams. Little-known William and Mary beat the University of Virginia, 26-14. And Duke University got a drubbing by the equally obscure Richmond Spiders, even if the team's name sounds more like a 70s era roller derby squad. So much for the tune-up that the ACC teams had in mind.

All of this, of course, offers hope for our Eastern Kentucky Colonels. Ranked 24th in the preseason polls, the Colonels hope to add another conference title to their mantle, which already holds 20 such trophies. Not only that, the Colonels have put together a string of 31 consecutive winning seasons-an active winning streak that's matched by just one other D1 school, Florida State, which amassed 32 winning seasons in a row. Those are impressive numbers, ones that surely hasn't gone unnoticed by the big football schools.

So when Eastern opened the 2009 season, traveling to Indiana to face the Hoosiers, it's pretty safe to say that the Bloomington crowd harbored at least some fear of being the next big school to fall to smaller prey.

And it almost happened. Eastern played well the entire game, making a late comeback before falling short in the end, 19-13. The team definitely had its chances. But an upset just wasn't in the cards that day.

Still, the Colonels earned Indiana's respect. And no doubt, Eastern also drew notice from its neighbors to the north, the University of Kentucky, who will go against the Colonels later in the year. If UK didn't see Eastern as much of an opponent before, they've surely had a wake-up call now.

After all, the history books are still open, quietly waiting for the next occasion when a big football program takes its smaller opponent lightly.

Reach Langdon at langdon_barnes20@eku.edu.

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