Loyola to play Ohio State in football Saturday (Really)

While many Chicagoans will be watching Northwestern take on Ohio State in football Saturday, a much smaller crowd will be watching the club football team from Loyola University Chicago take on the Ohio State University Club team.

Since Loyola doesn't have a football field, the game will kick-off at 2 p.m. on the football field at Glenbard South High School, 23W200 Butterfield Rd., Glen Ellyn.

Talk about David vs. Goliath!

The Loyola team is in its second year of existence and has yet to win a game, while the OSU team has existed for many years and has great depth.

In addition, because it's a club team, the players and several alumni who played on the last Loyola club football teams in the early 1970s have had to raise money to pay for almost everything, more than $30,000 per season.

The team members have had to find places to play its four home games as well as locate suitable practice fields. In addition, the team members had to find coaches, hire officials, purchase pads and uniforms and rent buses to the away games.

Bobby O'Mullan, No. 56, the team's starting linebacker, the club president and an LUC junior majoring in economics and finance has headed up the student team organizing and fund raising efforts for the last three years.

“Our team really lives up to the school's nickname ‘Ramblers.'” O'Mullan said. “Two of this year's games have to be played at Glenbard South and the team's two other home games are scheduled at Loyola Academy in Evanston. We couldn't get one practice field that had everything we needed, so now we practice at three different locations.”

O'Mullan's best discovery may have been the team's coach, John Clarke.

“Last year's team had very few players who had played any kind of organized football,” O'Mullan continued. “Clarke is a great teacher. He has taken a woman's professional football team, the Chicago Force, to a national championship, so he knows how to teach inexperienced players to play football.”

This year's team has 28 experience players, all of whom played varsity football in high school. O'Mullan says that they now do in one practice what it took three weeks to learn last year.

“It's fund just playing for the love of the game,” O'Mullan said. “We're getting better each day and we expect to give Ohio State a great game.”

The team doesn't have a website, but they do have a Facebook page: www.facebook.com/LoyolaClubFootball.