http://startribune.com/stories/503/5659009.html

 

Saturday broke clear and crisp, foretelling another glorious autumn day in Minnesota. So the Northwestern College football team played two.

 

The small Christian college in Roseville most likely became the first team in modern college-football history to play a doubleheader. The Eagles began Saturday at home just after noon in brilliant sunshine with prayer, the national anthem and an instant touchdown against Trinity Bible College and completed it in evening's chill 7 miles away and 10 hours later underneath floodlights at Macalester College. They won both games.

 

The concept, formerly one associated with baseball only, made National Collegiate Athletic Association administrators pause and the vigilant guy who prints the Eagles' team schedules balk. Even major leaguers don't play many doubleheaders anymore.

 

So when Northwestern's athletic director telephoned the NCAA last winter and asked whether there was a rule that prohibited a college football team from playing twice in a day, he received a simple question back.

 

"They asked, 'Pardon me?' " Matt Hill said.

 

The NCAA administrators rustled through some manuals that day, but couldn't find such a rule. Months later, the alarmed printer was reassured there was no mistake.

 

On Saturday, the Eagles players arrived in the morning's slanted light carrying breakfast in their hands.

 

During the Eagles' second halftime -- a two-hour break after their 59-0 victory over Trinity Bible -- they wolfed down submarine sandwiches, tossed their grass-stained game pants (their only pair) in the dryer and pulled on fresh white road jerseys before hopping a school bus for the short ride straight down Snelling Avenue to Macalester.

 

They also debated with one other whether they should shower between games.

 

"Some guys didn't, but I'm not one of those guys," said Northwestern sophomore Sean Yates, who wore his offensive lineman's uniform number 76 in the afternoon and a receiver's 84 at night. "It was really strange putting wet pads back on."

 

Northwestern College scheduled both games because of a scheduling quirk that often leaves teams in its Upper Midwest Athletic Conference -- an affiliation of 10 small private colleges from Missouri to North Dakota -- needing another non-conference opponent and a 10th game, the standard length of an NCAA Division III season.

 

So when Macalester officials called Hill last winter and asked if any UMAC team was available on the second Saturday in October, he looked at a packed conference schedule -- and proposed his team play twice.

 

He never imagined then the novelty would bring Sports Illustrated and ESPN to Northwestern's intimate Reynolds Field, where family, faculty members and friends bring blankets, poodles and retrievers.

 

Until this last week, Northwestern College still was considered by many as the little Bible school next to Lake Johanna, even though it hasn't been called Northwestern Bible for years. Its athletes were recognized only when they went into a restaurant with their purple letter jackets and interested eaters inquired about life in Evanston, Ill., home to the Big Ten's Northwestern University.

 

"At first, I was like, 'Man, this doesn't happen too often,' " said Sam Townsend, a junior defensive lineman from Fergus Falls, Minn. "Then, later, I heard it doesn't happen ever."

 

Northwestern head football coach Kirk Talley split his assistant coaches and his 75 players into two groups last week. One group -- reserves and junior-varsity players -- prepared for the afternoon game against Trinity Bible. Two years ago, the North Dakota school lost a game 105-0. It's the subject of a former Fargo, N.D., sportswriter's book called "Keeping the Faith: In the Trenches with College Football's Worst Team."

 

The other group -- Northwestern's starters -- prepped for winless Macalester, the cerebral but often athletically challenged school that plays an independent football schedule.

 

On Saturday morning, only 22 players, including five who play both offense and defense, filed off Trinity's bus.

 

On its first offensive play of the game, Northwestern ran 45 yards for a touchdown. The Eagles led 39-0 at halftime, despite having their skilled players sit the game out and playing their other starters only briefly.

 

On Saturday night, under a sliver of moon, the Eagles jumped out to a 33-0 halftime lead over Macalester before winning 47-14.

 

Trinity Bible first-year coach Jim Dotson called Northwestern's doubleheader "offensive" and a "putdown" to both his team and Macalester's.

 

"It'd be better if they played on Saturday and then again on a Tuesday night," he said.

 

Talley said his team didn't intend to prove anything or insult anyone Saturday. Instead, he called it an "awesome day of opportunity" for his players.

 

It also was a chance to summon a tradition -- the "Fifth Quarter," a postgame gathering of song, cheers and prayers with the Eagles players and their loved one -- twice in one day.

 

"Maybe we'll have to call it the Tenth Quarter just this once," Talley said of Saturday night's gathering.

We scrimmaged Northwestern this preseason and beat the hell out of them and play Mac this week (we beat them last year something like 55-14). And my team isn't all that good.

 

Both teams are brutal D3 teams, though the doubleheader thing is kind of cool and rightly deserves to be recognized.

Thats crazy

 

I'm sure the NCAA will create a rule against this now