Lost in the hype surrounding the upcoming college football bowl season, and in particular the BCS games in early January, is the fact that there are four other divisions aside from 1A (which apparently doesn’t exist anymore – the 1AA playoffs were renamed the Division 1 Championship), all of which recently completed playoffs to determine a national champion.  So without further ado, congratulations to…

Division I: Appalachian State University defeats the University of Massachusetts-Amherst – at one point while during the game, my wife caught a glimpse of the Mountaineers end zone, but only saw the first “mo” and the final “ers”.  Until I stepped in, she was a little concerned that Appalachian State’s nickname was not family friendly.  In related news, the students at UMass deemed the loss a catastrophe worthy of a riot.

Division II: Grand Valley State defeats Northwest Missouri State – The win gave Grand Valley State its second consecutive title, its fourth in five years, an undefeated season, and an NCAA-long 28 straight wins.  Last year’s championship game victory also came against Northwest Missouri State.

Division III: Mount Union defeats Wisconsin-Whitewater – Much like Division II, the 2006 Division III championship game featured a rematch of undefeated teams that had previously met in the 2005 title game, with the same result in both cases.  Wisconsin-Whitewater wanted a win for its coach, Bob Berezowitz, who is retiring after 22 years with the school, but was unable to overcome Division III football’s greatest dynasty; Mount Union has now won two consecutive championships and nine in the last fourteen seasons.  Coach Larry Kehres has a staggering 246-20-3 career record.

NAIA: Sioux Falls defeats St. Francis (Ind.) – This was the third lower division championship match-up of previously undefeated teams.  St. Francis was making its third straight appearance in the title game but remains winless, having lost to Montana’s Carroll College each of the last two seasons.  Sioux Falls won its first title since taking the 1996 NAIA 2 championship.