Drake's football coach hired away

[tornado]

Drake doesn't even give football scholarships - they have a football team but it's barely above the club-team level - and yet they have a pretty darned good coach and people have noticed.
He just got hired away from Drake and will now coach Eastern Michiagan.

http://www.godrakebulldogs.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=15700&ATCLID=209339124

[Old Coach]

Drake doesn't even give football scholarships - they have a football team but it's barely above the club-team level - and yet they have a pretty darned good coach and people have noticed.
He just got hired away from Drake and will now coach Eastern Michiagan.
http://www.godrakebulldogs.com/ViewA...CLID=209339124

That's good news for Eastern Illinois. Dino Babers had also interviewed for the job.

[Old Coach]

Drake doesn't even give football scholarships - they have a football team but it's barely above the club-team level - and yet they have a pretty darned good coach and people have noticed.
He just got hired away from Drake and will now coach Eastern Michiagan.
http://www.godrakebulldogs.com/ViewA...CLID=209339124

I wouldn't say that it's barely above club level. They play in the non-scholarship Pioneer Conference which gets an automatic bid to the D-I FCS playoffs. Butler earned the bid this year, but lost to Tennessee State in the first round. The Pioneer League is well above club football. Robert Morris University plays club football. Drake plays about 3 levels above RMU.

[Da Coach]

I wouldn't say that it's barely above club level. They play in the non-scholarship Pioneer Conference which gets an automatic bid to the D-I FCS playoffs. Butler earned the bid this year, but lost to Tennessee State in the first round. The Pioneer League is well above club football. Robert Morris University plays club football. Drake plays about 3 levels above RMU.

This is the first year that the 20 year old Pioneer League gets an automatic bid, and it's only because the FCS expanded the number of playoff teams. They have never had a team get an at-large bid or any kind of bid to the playoffs before.

Butler, San Diego, and Drake have dominated the Pioneer League the last 10 years, and Dayton dominated it before that.

So this is the first year that Pioneer League teams would get an automatic bid and participate in the FCS Playoffs. Teams actually bid to host the first round NCAA playoff games, and Butler forked out enough money to get to host a first round game against Tennessee State of the Ohio Valley Conference.-

Butler got blown out 31-0.

http://espn.go.com/ncf/recap?gameId=333342086

So when the best team in the PFL (Butler) finally got the chance to play in the FCS Playoff, and they get to play on their home field, they got embarrassed by a team that was not even the best team in the OVC. Tennessee State then moved on and played EIU and got blown out 51-10.
IMO, PFL is a lot closer to Club Football than you think. The players are essentially the same kind of players (non-scholarship, minimal recruiting) that you see in Club League football at other colleges.

BTW, Robert Morris-Peoria won the Great Lakes Conference Championship (Club level football), and they were really good. IMO, they are as good as the teams in the Pioneer League, and would have likely won that league this year.

http://www.rmueagles.com/schedule/11/124.php

[Old Coach]

BTW, Robert Morris-Peoria won the Great Lakes Conference Championship (Club level football), and they were really good. IMO, they are as good as the teams in the Pioneer League, and would have likely won that league this year.
http://www.rmueagles.com/schedule/11/124.php

There is no way RMU would have won the Pioneer League. They wouldn't have beat Eureka College.

[Da Coach]

There is no way RMU would have won the Pioneer League. They wouldn't have beat Eureka College.

And do you think Drake or Butler could? I suspect Eureka could beat any of the Pioneer teams.