Quote from: Jbothe on October 20, 2026, 09:39:19 AMWBB in the CCIW is pretty rough right now.  Even in a rebuilding year I think IWU is way out in front.  Just from my observing over the years they general level of athleticism seems to have gone down. 

My thoughts exactly.

Quote from: scottiedawg on October 19, 2026, 12:35:37 PMI've still got Carroll 2nd, but I fully understand why NCC was voted #2.

My reasoning is NCC won 0.538 against a not great Strength of Schedule last year 0.505.

They do return a lot, 86.2%, but in my experience mediocre teams that return a lot don't usually take a large step forward. Most often they remain mediocre.

You're not taking into account the overall mediocrity of the conference. Perhaps the most disheartening thing about North Park being bad the past few seasons is that the Park's been bad at a time when the league as a whole has not been good.

Quote from: New Tradition on October 19, 2026, 12:10:17 PMGlad your mind went there.  My immediate thought was that NCUN detractors would start appending a cerTain letter to the end.

Hadn't even thought of that one, and I'm glad that I didn't. I can ride an opponent with the best of them (currently fighting an urge to reply to Big Blue Ben with, "What, Wesleyan, arrogant? What could ever make someone think that?!"), but I'd like to think that whenever I ride I ride on the high road.

Which reminds me that I have to ask Lucas if North Central is going to comp his hotel room in Minneapolis if he ever gets called up to work P.A. for a game at the main campus.

Quote from: CarollFan on October 19, 2026, 10:37:25 AMLogan 34-4 (89%) straight up in CCIW game predictions.

The 4 games that went the other way:

NPU @ Millikin
IWU @ Augie
Wheaton @ NCC
IWU @ Millikin

No, it's now five games where Logan has had it wrong. He had Carthage as a one-point favorite over North Park last week.

Quote from: markerickson on October 18, 2026, 10:11:52 PMHappy that Vance and Vuckovic are back!  I know nothing about the other Serb. (Unknown to me) Mustaf Rexhepi from Niles North, coached by Glen Olson...his son set records at Niles North, which is a good program, and Reid plays for Wheaton.  I talked to Olson at the Wheaton game about some of his players I coached in baseball.

Sergio McLain Jr.    and whole lotta other transfers.

I don't think that Moose Rexhepi is a Serbian-American. Quite the contrary; "Rexhepi" is a 100% dyed-in-the-wool, no-doubt-about-it Albanian surname. That's reinforced by the fact that his given name is "Mustaf".

Call an Albanian a Serb, and you could wind up in a world of trouble. Same thing the other way around.

Quote from: CarollFan on October 18, 2026, 09:04:19 AMAfter doing some research looks like going to the Isthmus Bowl may be based only on conference record not total record?

Yes, the Isthmus Bowl website clearly states that the selection of the participants is based upon the standings of the two conferences.

Quote from: CarollFan on October 18, 2026, 09:04:19 AMNPU still has Augie, Carroll and IWU on their schedule. They could shake some things up in regards to Isthmus Bowl.

Yep. Run the table against Augie, Carroll, IWU, and Elmhurst, and then it's off to Mad City, baby!

Three touchdowns scored in the final two minutes (two by Millikin sandwiching one by Illinois Wesleyan) in Millikin's 42-35 home win over the Big Blue's archival.

Man, the paying customers at Lindsay Field have certainly been getting their money's worth of end-of-the-game dramatics this season.

North Park looked effective, if hardly dominant, for 59 and a half minutes. The running game worked well, for the most part; the defense was opportunistic (2 ints, 2 recovered fumbles) and resilient (no TDs allowed, even though the Firebirds were in the red zone twice); and great special teams (superb punting by Hugo Backing to pin Carthage deep multiple times, and a 46-yard FG on the last play of the 1st half by Robert Kubon that is the longest FG kicked by the Vikings in 59 years). They played very well.

But they weren't dominant, which is why they were only up 17-6 with half a minute left. Facing a 4th-and-10 at the Carthage 22, NPU chose neither to attempt a 39-yard FG or just take a knee. They stayed in a standard pistol formation -- and botched the snap. The ball got kicked backwards, and a Carthage defender scooped it up at the 32 and took it 68 yards to the house.

After NPU sacked Carthage QB Leo Chiapetta on the 2-pt conversion try that would've put the Firebirds within a field goal, Carthage attempted an onside kick. And for the second time this season while nursing a tight lead in the waning moments against a CCIW opponent, North Park couldn't recover the other team's onside kick.

So Carthage got the ball back on its own 43 with 20 seconds left, in position for an amazing comeback win if Chiapetta & Co. could go 57 yards to paydirt in that short amount of time. Fortunately for Kyle Rooker's blood pressure, the prevent defense forced three incompletions and a quickly-tackled completion in the flat, and the Vikings got off of Art Keller Field with a win.

The Vikings aren't a half-bad football team at all. And they certainly earned this road victory. I'm just a little tired of seeing them try to shoot themselves in the foot at the ends of games, that's all.

Final from Kenosha:

North Park 17
Carthage 12

For the third time this season the Vikings saw a win turn into a potential loss in the final sixty seconds. This time, though, they dodged yet another bullet that was largely of their own making and finished the W.

Quote from: mr_b on October 17, 2026, 10:57:17 AMIn US higher education, there is a distinction between the two, with a university offering more graduate program options, while a college suggests a smaller or even more selective type of institution.  Furthermore, in many countries, as "college" is synonymous with secondary and not higher education. That said, schools can use "College" or "University" without having to meet any external conditions -- for example, Wheaton has chosen to keep "College" as their name.  North Park had expanded its graduate degree programs in the early 1990s, so it wanted its full name to reflect this fact.

Exactly. And with a significant presence of international students and students from families newly arrived in this country, it was important for North Park not to allow itself to be hampered by that difference in meaning in the word "college" between the U.S. and other countries. That, as well as acknowledging North Park's grad programs, was why it made sense to change the name thirty years ago. As far as North Central is concerned, there are nine graduate-degree programs available at that school, so it makes complete sense to have the school's name reflect that.

But you're right that schools can use whatever designations they want. There are no rules where that's concerned. Wheaton has grad programs, but it still calls itself a college. Illinois Wesleyan has no grad programs, but it calls itself a university.

Yep. And you can bet dollars to donuts that that UMAC school is not going to add "Minneapolis" to its name, either. The Rams will simply say, "We've had this name since 1998, so why should we change just because you've decided that you like the name, too?"

Dibs. They're a wonderful thing to have when they're on your side.

I remember when a particularly stylish Shatil Khoury goal at Holmgren eight or nine years ago was clipped and posted by NPU on what was then called Twitter, and it went viral and got a quarter of a million views. It was quite an ego rush to think that that many people had heard me call a goal (although the number probably reflected some people giving it multiple views; it was a pretty impressive strike by Khoury).

Then two days later I called a women's volleyball match that was watched online by about two dozen people, and that brought me back down to Earth.

Been there, done that.

A fair number of North Park College alumni were in a tizzy when our alma mater swapped out "College" for "University" thirty years ago. I was not one of them, because there were a couple of very valid reasons that led to the name change, and also because they kept it simple and didn't add an extra geographic qualifier, as some people on the Board of Trustees whom I felt were misguided were speculating that the new name would be "North Park University Chicago" (with a preposition such as "of" or "in" possibly preceding "Chicago" as well).

(I understand that North Central is in a different position, since there already is a school called North Central University, and, even  worse, it's a fellow D3 school. At least, that's my guess as to why the new name includes the word "Naperville".)

Thirty years ago, in an attempt to help some of my fellow NPC alums get used to our school becoming NPU, I told them to hang on to their North Park College sweatshirts and paraphernalia, and to buy up whatever was left of it in the bookstore, because it might be worth some good money someday. Well, I've never checked eBay to see if that's come to pass, but every now and then I'll see a current student walk around campus in a North Park College t-shirt or sweatshirt, and I smile at the thought of a legacy student stealing mom's or dad's old "College" clothing while packing to head off to NPU.

Quote from: CarollFan on October 16, 2026, 09:37:38 AMNPU @ Carthage game mentioned in the quick hits.

https://d3football.com/notables/2026/10/quick-hits-week7

"Probably the best winless team in the country" is a pretty dubious compliment. I'd like to see it put in the rear-view mirror tomorrow.

That's what I heard -- literally. John Born was in one of the coach's rooms in the Holmgren press box watching the men's game in Naperville on his phone while also watching the women's game on the field below. I heard him yell, "That's incredible!" even as I was in the midst of calling the game in front of me. He's never done that before; half the time I'm not even aware that he's in the press box at all.

He said afterwards that North Central should post it on social media, because the goal was so sensational -- apparently French tucked a rocket just below the crossbar from 38 yards out -- that it would immediately go viral. Doesn't sound like anybody did, though.