The Daily Egyptian is published by the students of SIU at Carbondale. Except during vacations and exam weeks, The Daily Egyptian is published Monday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters and TWThF during the summer semester."

SIU: Youngstown State is our goal

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio - At first glance, Stambaugh Stadium, home to the Youngstown State football team, is nothing short of phenomenal for a Division I-AA team.

The outside could be mistaken for an NFL stadium, complete with skyboxes, luxury suites, tons of fans and massive security to make sure no one parks in the wrong place or sees the game for free.

There is no mistaking how much Youngstown loves its football team, either.

The McDonald's across from the stadium is loaded with nothing but Penguins memorabilia, including pictures of all its national championship teams and several odds and ends one would expect from a restaurant near a professional or major collegiate stadium.

It was full of people wearing Youngstown State jerseys. And, despite a team that has fallen on hard times, more than 16,000 people showed up even tough Ohio State was still playing just a few hours down the road.

Even the fire hydrants are painted like Penguins.

In many ways, Youngstown State is the I-AA equivalent of Ohio State. It proudly displays its four national championship banners, which were won in the last 13 seasons, behind the West end zone.

Everything about Youngstown State, its stadium and its fans remind you that you are walking on hallowed I-AA ground, and that visiting teams are usually going to be in for a dog fight.

This is the vision SIU has for its future - but it may take a while.

"When I came into the league, I said we want to someday be like Youngstown State," SIU head coach Jerry Kill said after his team dismantled the Penguins in their own house.

"We're certainly not there yet, and I can tell you that even though we won the game."

Not there yet is certainly an understatement. Thus far, the only thing SIU has going for it is winning.

SIU football does not have the loyal following Youngstown State enjoys, nor does it have the football atmosphere.

Even more obvious is the stadium, which is doing so poorly the only solution SIU has for the constant water leakage is to build a new stadium.

Youngstown State's home is not only properly waterproofed, it comes complete with massive locker rooms, two built-in gymnasiums and several elevators. The press box is high enough to give the feeble-stomached vertigo and is the Solomon's Temple of the Gateway Conference.

McAndrew's press box, on the other hand, is a painted trailer.

Kill knows his program has a long way to go, and pointed out that the Kill era is in its infancy, but still thinks he can get it done

"What they have here is very special," Kill said about Youngstown State. "Can we be like that? We've got a long way to go.

"We haven't even been in this thing four years and we haven't even had back-to-back winning seasons in 20 years."

But those associated with Saluki football say it is possible, and there are some parallels between SIU and Youngstown State.

Like the Penguins, SIU moved down from I-A and has a potential marketing monopoly, although it would be much smaller than Youngstown because of the community's small population. The Penguins are the only game in town, with Cleveland an hour away, Columbus two hours away and Pittsburgh an hour away.

The closest major sports town to Carbondale is St. Louis, which is two hours away. The Salukis, potentially, could form a comparable winning tradition.

The key, according to SIU Athletic Director Paul Kowalczyk, is that the team needs to continue to win.

He was at Northwestern when the Wildcats took a cliff-dive after two winning seasons and a trip to the Rose Bowl in 1995.

"We've got to have some longevity," Kowalczyk said. "There are plateaus in this business when you're trying to build programs. We need to be successful and sustain that success to really see the numbers grow."

A couple national championships could, historically at least, put SIU on the same plane as the Penguins.

Youngstown has four championships in recent memory, and if SIU runs the table this year it will have two. If Kill sticks around and SIU goes back to back, which is possible considering there will be little talent drop-off from 2004 to 2005, the Salukis will have won three championships in the last 22 seasons.

Should the new stadium ever come to fruition and if Southern Illinois starts to sell out McAndrew Stadium, the Youngstown dream could become reality - and the first step is winning the 2004 national championship.

"That's what we're building at SIU, and I think coach has been quoted before saying we're four years ahead of what he thought and what he expected," said SIU quarterback Joel Sambursky, who has been SIU's football's main building block in the Kill era. "So we are building something at SIU, and to get a national championship would be incredible."