Farley hopes for no letup

Northern Iowa has the Missouri Valley Football Conference championship and the automatic FCS playoff berth that goes with it.

Time to relax, rest some starters and take the regular-season finale in stride, right? Not quite, UNI Coach Mark Farley said.

“It's business as usual, but at the same time there's no question there is a sense of relief,” he said. “Last week took a lot of pressure off this team.”

The 12th-ranked Panthers (7-3, 6-1), who beat Missouri State, 38-14, last Saturday, close the regular season this Saturday at Western Illinois (6-4, 4-3), a team playing for its playoff life.

UNI has won five in a row and six of its last seven after a 1-2 start. That sense of relief, however, could spell disaster, Farley said, if the team still is patting itself on the back Saturday.

“We're just trying to get our team ready to play,” he said, “trying to get them off cloud nine a little bit. That relief can put you in a place of complacency. We can't go there.”

First-round playoff games are Nov. 27, and Farley would prefer to go with a six-game winning streak rather than a one-game losing streak.

“This game is important,” he said. “We also want to ... have some momentum going into the playoffs. We still have to get better this week if we're going to have a chance in the playoffs.”

The conference title is the 15th for UNI in 26 years in the Gateway/MVFC.

“It's been a lot of good players, a lot of good coaches, a lot of good teams,” said Farley, who is responsible for six of those titles and is 89-35 in his 10th season.