It’s hard to avoid noticing the trend. At the beginning of Mount Union’s run, the Purple Raiders were playing Defiance for their non-conference game (the Ohio Athletic Conference has 10 teams, meaning only one opponent must be found each year). Then it was Albion, followed by Allegheny. All regional foes, all within a reasonable distance and with the last two, some reason to expect a competitive result, at least at the time the game was scheduled.

But two years of Allegheny were followed by two years of UW-Whitewater, then Wash U, not an easy trip for either squad. The outcome was hardly in doubt last year and won’t be this year. Next on the list, Averett, a nearly 500-mile trip past Salem to the North Carolina/Virginia border. Mount Union has to go further and further afield to find an opponent. In an era of automatic playoff bids for winning your conference and Pool C bids expanding from three to seven, there’s less and less reason to duck a strong non-conference opponent.

Kudos to Averett for taking the challenge. And shame on anyone closer to Alliance who shared the same open date.

Millsaps couldn’t provide any documentation to verify its claim that Concordia-Selma (or as they list it, Concordia (AL)) had a varsity football program. Well, according to this article from the Selma Times-Journal which a reader sent, they don’t currently, but plan to in 2005. They claim to have ended spring practice with 64 players.

Good thing it’s a home game for Millsaps — with the way Concordia-Selma gets scores out from its other sports, I doubt Millsaps would get accurate stats from this game.

A handful of schools have yet to release a 2005 schedule, but we’ve gotten final schedules from Newport News, Ursinus and Gustavus Adolphus over the past week. About half of the schedules still missing are from the NESCAC, which only affects the teams on that little island anyway.

The Gustavus folks say they still might have an announcement soon about adding a tenth game. If so, it might have to be a long trip, or someone from outside Division III, or Crown, or a second game against St. Thomas. Either that or Northwestern is looking to play three games in one day. (For those who missed it, the first-year provisional members are already taking on mighty Trinity Bible and Macalester on the same day, Oct. 8.)

There are some games which we know must exist, but just don’t know for sure when. We assume Rochester and Worcester Polytech will play each other this year, since both are in the Liberty League. Rowan would be expected to play Kean, right?

Millsaps only has eight games at this point. Well, they have nine games listed on their own Web site, but one of the schools on the list, “Concordia (AL)”, doesn’t appear to have varsity football.

One school sent us a schedule that claimed it was playing SUNY-Maritime in its opener this year. Interesting, considering Maritime doesn’t play varsity football until 2006.

Montclair State and Huntingdon are still an opponent short after the Thomas More/PAC fallout. You know, considering that the PAC appears intent on adding more teams — “Long-term, we envision a PAC with 8-10 members … we expect to reach our desired membership level in the near future,” said the leader of the conference’s presidents council — if I were a coach, I’d be very leery about scheduling ANY teams in that conference right now. Who would want to be caught in the next PAC land grab?

And in closing, even though we haven’t asked for them yet, we have received two 2005 season previews. So dig in!