The Rock

Brandon Fusco left Slippery Rock with a retired number, a Gene Upshaw Award and, in 2022, a place in the school's Hall of Fame. He is one name among several the university claims in the NFL, alongside Greg Paterra, who ran for 3,149 yards before the Atlanta Falcons picked him up, and Wes Hills, who still holds the single-season rushing record here and moved on to the NFL and the CFL.

None of that changes what the season actually turns on: the Coal Bowl against Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

The Rock have gone to the PSAC final nine times, with titles stretching from 1939 to 2011, and reached the Division II playoff semifinals as recently as 2024, when Ferris State ended the run. A quarterfinal win over California the same year showed the current squad can still do damage in November, even if the deepest state championships — six of them, the last in 1974 — belong to an older era of the programme.

Games are played at Mihalik-Thompson Stadium, on Bob DiSpirito Field, in front of a crowd capped at 10,000 in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania. The university itself dates to 1889, but organised football did not start there until 1898, two years before the team began playing on a proper intercollegiate footing.