UNI Football: Even race makes?things interesting

“Parity” has been the catch phrase in the Missouri Valley Football Conference this fall. With good reason.

All nine teams have at least one league loss and at least one league win. All nine have at least two losses overall. And there are five weeks left in the season.

The coaches agree parity is a good thing and makes every game interesting and important.

But when it comes to picking the field for the 16-team NCAA Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, it could spell disaster.

Western Illinois leads the league at 3-1 and has the best overall mark at 5-2. Indiana State and Northern Iowa are 2-1 in league play and 4-2 and 3-3 overall, respectively.

“We have a very good reputation.” said Illinois State Coach Brock Spack, whose Redbirds (3-2, 4-3) travel to UNI for the Panthers' homecoming Saturday (4:05 p.m., KWWL). “But when you beat up on each other, you kind of water down the postseason a little bit.

“We'll have to see how it plays out.”

The past three seasons, two MVFC teams made the playoff field. Four advanced in 2003, the most in league history. This year, it's conceivable only the league champion will qualify.

“It's a hard-nosed physical league,” North Dakota State Coach Craig Bohl said.

“The physicality and parity is a real challenge. We can't do anything about that other than play the teams we are playing.”

Northern Iowa Coach Mark Farley said there is something that can be done about - a bit of lobbying by the league itself.

“It's our job to make sure that we present the league in a way that gives us the opportunity,” he said.

“I think we really need to take a hard look as a conference to see how we can present ourselves in a way that, even with parity, we can get two or three teams in.”

Farley, in his 10th season as Northern Iowa's head coach after 10 years as an assistant, said he's never seen anything like this in the Gateway/MVFC.

“Every team has enough quality ... the personnel and players are excellent,” he said. “That's the biggest thing that has changed, the quality of the players.”

There are no easy Saturdays, the coaches agree.

“We're all just trying to win another game,” Spack said.

By J.R. Ogden