Baffoe: St. Xavier Brings Pride And Hopefully A Title To South Side
By Tim Baffoe-
(CBS) I drive past St. Xavier University at least once a day, sometimes ten times if the jones for pizza or something else in amorous housewives strikes the western reaches of Mt. Greenwood. Xav's (pronounced Zavs), as it is referred to colloquially (though, due to some odd Southwest Side lexical phenomena, when the full name is said 'round these parts it is usually mispronounced as St. Eggs-ZAY-vyer), is nestled within a chunk of land at the very edge of the city limits.
That's a square half-mile of land containing the university, Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School (the largest all-girls high school in the country), and Brother Rice High School, a.k.a. "Almost St. Rita and Mt. Carmel." On the Southwest corner of the land is residential Talley's Corner where people who want to say they live in Chicago but also want to be cut off from the rest of Chicago reside. I think those folks are all Opus Dei, but I can't be sure since I never go in there. Across the street directly to the east is Queen of Martyrs grade school, almost as fine a one as St. Cajetan.
There are about 5,000 students at Xav's, though by just driving down busy 103rd Street you would never know it, as most of the academic buildings and dorms on the main campus are not too visible from that vantage point. It is a fine school, especially for potential nurses and teachers, but it has never been one of those colleges that kids grow up dreaming of attending.
Being a kid on the South Side, Xav's is just… there. It's "that college that happens to be in the neighborhood." But it's not Notre Dame or Michigan to a kid. There is seemingly nothing exotic or fascinating about the place for neighborhood residents.
Despite its lack of allure—and I mean that in the kindest way possible—many of those kids who grow up never giving the place much thought find themselves there as young adults. As kids are wont to do, they realize when reality hits them in the face that a school is not about a famous fight song or talking heads babbling about its sports teams on national television shows.
It is then that they realize what a place like Xav's really offers—a great education and preparation for the job world. I cannot even name all the friends and great people I know with undergrad or postgrad degrees from there.
But now the school is not "just… there," and that is because of its football team. For the first time in the team's history it will play for the NAIA National Championship on Saturday in Rome, Georgia against Carroll College of Helena, Montana.
Now, it's not as though the 2011 football team is an aberration. The Cougars have quietly been a force in NAIA football for a while, and head coach Mike Feminis has compiled an impressive 115-41 record since taking over the program in 1999, including three straight 13-1 seasons. The Cougars have come just shy of the championship game each of the last two seasons, losing in the semifinal game both in 2009 and 2010.
Their home games always draw great crowds, and the pregame "festivities" among fans have steadily grown into quite a thing on a Saturday mornings and afternoons.
Full disclosure: I'm not writing this merely because I live near the school. I happen to have seven former students playing for the Cougars on Saturday, including this guy whom I may have to go back in the archives and retroactively fail in my British Literature course for that hair (the miracles of my teaching only go so far with kids from Bridgeport, and I know this is not some tribute to Beowulf).
And while I personally have publicly and privately harped on the inferiority of college athletics to the pros and railed against the pus-filled abscess that is most of the NCAA, a story like this feels good on my cynical sports heart, and I genuinely hope these kids and the great coaching staff pull out a victory in Georgia.
There is nothing not to like about the Cougars. All but six of the players on the roster are from Illinois, and most of them are from Chicago or surrounding suburbs. There is no glitz and glamour at an NAIA school—no rock star status or national commercials or shady men slipping envelopes of cash to players or documentary films or classes like AIDS Awareness or Boat Repair 101.
There are such things as visiting very excited grade school kids in Georgia and reading to them and signing autographs, as seen in the earlier picture with Matt The Mohawk, but that stuff is genuine and not intended for the cameras. But that doesn't sell jerseys or strike national TV deals, so who cares, right?
These players are the definition of "student athlete," for it is highly unlikely any of them will play football professionally, and while it is one of my most hated phrases in the English language, they all truly play just "for the love of the game." Only twenty-four full scholarships are allowed on a football team by the NAIA (two players on partial scholarships would equal one full scholarship toward that total), and being a private university, Xav's is not exactly cheap tuition-wise. These players have sacrificed much of the college-party lifestyle farther away from mom and dad and/or at a much bigger (and maybe cheaper) school in order to play competitive football while also receiving a great education.
There is something to be said in that. There is also something to be proud of around here and throughout all of Chicago, too. I know I certainly am, especially of Dave Marciano, Jimmy Johnson, Tom Hitz, Tim Beyer, Tim Ladd, Kevin Berrigan, and I guess the follicly-demented Matt Munizzi, too.
So good luck to you, Cougars. I will be watching Saturday at 3:30 CST once I figure out what channel CBS Sports Network is on my cable provider.
