Salukis

Carbondale sits in the stretch of southern Illinois that locals have long called "Little Egypt," and the university's football team took its name from that history rather than from the town itself: the Saluki, the sighthound once bred along the Nile and known as the Royal Dog of Egypt. In the program's early decades the team played simply as the Maroons, the colour that alongside black still marks Saluki Stadium today.

That stadium, a horseshoe holding 15,000, has hosted a program running back to 1913, one that missed only a single season, 1943, when the war emptied the roster. The high point came in 1983, when Rey Dempsey's side went 13-1 and beat Western Carolina 43-7 for the Division I-AA national championship, a result that still anchors the programme's identity. Two coaches did the rebuilding decades later: Jerry Kill arrived in 2003, turned four straight losing years into four straight winning ones, and took three conference titles in a row; Dale Lennon followed with two more before Nick Hill, once the team's own quarterback, took charge in 2016.

Southern Illinois has sent 36 players into the NFL. Brandon Jacobs carries a Super Bowl ring from the Giants, but it was Jim Hart, nineteen seasons at quarterback for the Cardinals, who did the most to put the programme on the professional map.

The oldest grudge runs against the Illinois State Redbirds, a series dating to 1905 that Southern Illinois still leads after more than a century of meetings. The newer rivalry belongs to the Missouri Valley Football Conference, where the Northern Iowa Panthers have become the team Carbondale most wants to beat.