Less than 13 hours after the Montana Grizzlies and Richmond Spiders wrap up their quest for the Football Championship Series crown Friday night in Chattanooga, Tenn., the Carroll College Saints kick off their chase for the NAIA national championship in Rome, Ga., Saturday afternoon.
It's a mere 55 miles between the two cities.
Parker's only lament is that he won't be one of the Carroll fans at the Richmond-Montana game. The NAIA national championship banquet will be going on Friday night in Rome at the same time the Grizzlies and Spiders are battling just up U.S. Highway 27.
“If it wasn't for that, I'd be at the Grizzly game, too,” Parker says.
The top-ranked Saints, in the NAIA playoffs for the ninth consecutive year, are playing for the national championship for the sixth time in the last seven years.
They've never lost the title game.
“I think it's just amazing that in a state with less than a million people, you have two college football teams playing for national championships,” Parker says.
The last time it happened was 2004, when Montana lost to James Madison in Chattanooga. Back then (and up to last year) the NAIA title game was in Savannah, Tenn., which - even though it was in the same state as Chattanooga - was still a much longer commute. Fans who went to both games had to travel 175 miles on two-lane highways through Tennessee, slowing for dozens of small towns with names like Belvidere and Beans Creek.
“We still had a ton of Griz fans show up who drove all night,” Parker says.
Carroll beat St. Francis 15-13 that year. This year the Saints are playing second-ranked Sioux Falls (S.D.) in a rematch of last year's national championship, won 17-9 by Carroll.
Now the championship games are not only less than a day apart, the sites are less than an hour apart. Indeed, the two charter flights headed out of Helena for the NAIA championship will land in Chattanooga, not Atlanta, thereby clipping 30 or more miles and plenty of potential traffic jams out of the ground transportation.
“It's cool that both the games are so close,” Parker says. “Hopefully, we'll both get 'er done.”
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)
GOSAINTS wrote on Dec 16, 2008 9:32 AM: