An American in Serbia

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There are professional football leagues in many European countries, and Division III football players often play professionally for a few years, earn a living and see the world.

Consider it an extension of the liberal arts education.

I recently stumbled across the blog of one of those players, former Grinnell wide receiver Nick Merklin. He’s playing for the Kragujevac Wild Boars and paints an interesting picture of what it’s like as a Division III football player in Europe.

The blog can be found at http://footballinserbia.wordpress.com/

What’s up with the SLIAC?

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Two SLIAC teams dropped football this offseason, and now the rumblings are growing that the SLIAC and UMAC are getting back into their alliance.

The leagues split up a couple of years ago as each tried to pursue an automatic bid independently. The SLIAC got close and was on track to get a tourney bid as early as 2010 before Blackburn and Principia dropped the sport this offseason. Huntingdon and LaGrange, which joined the league as football-only affiliates, brought the SLIAC’s total to eight, but with just six playing the sport next season, the league won’t qualify.

The UMAC has just five football-playing members, and not many opportunities to add to that total unless other schools in the league add the sport. St. Scholastica brought the total to five.

A renewal of the UMAC-SLIAC alliance would bring the total to nine teams and restart the two-year waiting period clock, with, potentially, 2009 and 2010 as waiting years and 2011 as an automatic bid. Of course, that would likely leave Huntingdon and LaGrange back out in the cold, as two teams in the Southeast with nine teams scattered from St. Louis to Duluth, Minn.

One school reportedly jumped the gun and released news on its Web site, though that release has since been pulled. The SLIAC declined comment, while UMAC commissioner Corey Borchardt would not take questions but gave the following statement to D3sports.com: “We currently only have five institutions that offer football. Certainly any time that we can look to expand the number of institutions that offer football, we would want to do that. We want to see that number increase and hope to do so for the AQ and for scheduling purposes.”

Hopefully Huntingdon and LaGrange are calling all of the SCAC schools left in the lurch by Colorado College, because if they end up with eight conference games plus a Dome Day, then that’s nine games and I doubt many will choose to play a 10th game and honor their commitment to Huntingdon and LaGrange.

View from the inside at Colorado College

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It came without warning, the dropping of Colorado College football. It appears the school might not have even had the courtesy to call its own conference and let them know that football and softball were going away, as was women’s water polo, not an SCAC sport.

In fairly short order, we’ve lost three Division III football programs, after we’d lost just three in the previous decade. Mass-Boston and Swarthmore were cut loose after the 2000 season, while New Jersey City shut it down after the 2002 season.

Chris Jarmon, who has been blogging since choosing Division III on a blog we’ve previously cited called The D3 Experience, tells the story of Colorado College football being eliminated.

He’d been writing all season as Colorado College struggled and finished winless. But this was basically a surprise to everyone on campus.

Jarmon isn’t letting his career end: “As soon as I heard the news, I knew I had to transfer. Football means almost everything to me, and I couldn’t live with myself not knowing I’d exhausted all playing opportunities. To be honest, I don’t know how I’m going to live without football once my senior season is over. So to not play my remaining three seasons would be the biggest regret of my life.”

Read the full story.

This makes Jarmon’s blog even more interesting than expected. But not in a way he wanted.