Tigers

Koi Ishto Stadium takes its name from the Chickasaw words for "big cat," a nod that now describes the ground where East Central University has played since the program's earliest years in Ada, Oklahoma. The football team dates to 1909, the same year the school opened as East Central State Normal School, and the sport has carried the Tigers name through more than a century of changes in the college's own identity.

The rivalry with the University of Arkansas at Monticello's Boll Weevils has become one of the fixtures on the Tigers' schedule, the kind of matchup that draws a fuller house than most non-conference dates at a stadium built to hold 5,000. East Central plays in the Great American Conference at the NCAA Division II level, a step below the scale of the sport's most visible programs but one where results still carry weight within the conference standings.

Black and orange have marked the Tigers' kit for most of that history, colours that show up across the campus in Ada as much as on the field. The program has stayed a fixture of the town rather than outgrowing it, drawing its rosters and its following largely from the same part of Oklahoma the university itself has served since 1909.

East Central heads into each season looking to hold its own in the Great American Conference and keep its edge in the Boll Weevils fixture, the game that still means the most on the Tigers' calendar.