FOOTBALL IS BACK
Our `long' wait for football is over with FCS opener of Tarleton State-McNeese State
Every Super Bowl comes with sadness, no matter the final score. Football is finished. The gridiron goes dark for at least six months. Melancholy reigns through spring and summer, awaiting the return of America's Game.
Except this year. Our wait is six days.
Saturday night in Stephenville, Texas, Tarleton State hosts McNeese State as the Division I-AA season, postponed from autumn by the pandemic, kicks off. Next week arrives a big slate of games from what the NCAA terms the Football Championship Subdivision.
Remember all the talk last summer about postponing college football to the spring? Most I-AA conferences did just that.
“All the eyes on you,” said Tarleton State receiver Tariq Bitson, a junior from Tulsa Booker T. Washington. “You get a chance to, I guess you could say, put on a show for people who normally wouldn't be watching. Gives you a bit more motivation to know people are going to be watching.”
You can watch Tarleton State-McNeese State at 6 p.m. Saturday on Fox Sports Plus (Cox cable 68/HD 715).
FCS football sits in the shadow of the major universities. While the Oklahomas and Alabamas and Notre Dames are dominating air waves, the South Dakotas and Austin Peays and Cal Polys play in virtual anonymity.
Still, that level has ballplayers. The NFL opened in September with 141 I-AA products on rosters, including quarterbacks Ryan Fitzpatrick (Harvard), Carson Wentz (North Dakota State), Joe Flacco (Delaware) and Jimmy Garoppolo (Eastern Illinois).
And now FCS has the stage to itself. Even if the weather outside is frightful. Kickoff temperature in Stephenville is expected to be 26.
“It will be different for sure,” said Tarleton State offensive lineman Austin Whitehead, a junior from Enid. “We normally open up in August; pretty hot then.
“I think it'll be 100 percent worth it. It's been over a year since any of us have got to play in a football game.”
Tarleton State, in its first year up from Division II, has an eight-game schedule that includes games against Division I-A New Mexico State and Oklahoma D-II schools East Central and Northeastern State.
Every team has a story. If you want reasons to be interested in the other side, McNeese State will play for the first time in 448 days, a span in which the Cowboys endured a global pandemic and two major hurricanes. No housing for three months for the school located in Lake Charles, Louisiana. No facilities for workouts or conditioning for five months.
“We get to play,” said McNeese State coach Frank WIlson. “We get to play a game on Saturday, and that's a big deal for our football program and university.”
The Cowboys' most recent team, 2019, played at OSU and lost 56-14.
This autumn, OSU hosts Missouri State — and the Bears have an eight-game spring schedule, starting with Illinois State on Feb. 20. Missouri State played three games in the fall, losing 49-0 at OU, then losing twice to Central Arkansas, 27-20 and 33-24.
The Sooners host Western Carolina in September, and the Catamounts also have an eight-game spring schedule, starting with Furman on Feb. 20. Western Carolina also was 0-3 in the fall, losing 58-14 to Liberty, 49-17 to Eastern Kentucky and 49-9 to North Carolina.
Some Division I-AA games will be televised by Fox Sports and ESPNU; a bunch will be offered on ESPN Plus. So the potential exists to scout these future OU and OSU opponents.
“I think the audiences will be very good on ESPN Plus,” said commissioner Jim Schaus of the Southern Conference, of which Western Carolina is a member. “People that love college football can see some great college football, even if they're not a fan of a particular school.”
Would a spring season have worked for the Big 12 and other Power 5 conferences? We'll likely never know. The scourge of COVID-19 has raged into this spring semester but is subsiding, and vaccines are being administered. It seems as if the I-AA programs have a great chance to produce a season and stage a planned 16-team playoff beginning in late April.
The autumn was strange for Tarleton State. The Texans basically held their normal spring practice in the fall. On Saturdays, they would scrimmage, then go home and watch nearby Texas Tech and Baylor and Texas Christian play a near-full schedule.
“It's definitely something you have to adapt to,” said Bitson, a nephew of former University of Tulsa star receiver Dan Bitson. “Everybody's just excited to play football at this point. Just being able to play, you take it any time you can get it.”
Every player has a story. Bitson, a senior graduate transfer, was a 2019 Division II All-American at Adams State in Alamosa, Colorado. He led the nation with 144 receiving yards per game.
After Adams State's 2020 season was scrapped, Bitson was looking to transfer closer to home and “an opportunity I could showcase my talent on the Division I level.”
Tarleton State provides the Division I level and the spring season provides the showcase.
“Obviously, the major schools, then the NFL, they had their season,” Bitson said. “Now that that's all over with, the FCS has all the eyes on them.”
My eyes will be watching. I've gone without football long enough.
Berry Tramel: Berry can be reached at 405-760-8080 or at btramel@oklahoman. com. He can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:405:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including FM-98.1. Support his work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today.