Sycamores

Sycamores compete in NCAA Division I football, at the Football Championship Subdivision level, a tier below college football's top flight and well short of the professional game. It appears among professional listings by name alone, not by anything achieved on the field, and whatever a stray classification elsewhere suggests, no NFL franchise has ever carried the name.

The nickname is not a club's own invention. It belongs to Indiana State University, attached to its football programme rather than to any freestanding side, and it has stayed there rather than following the path some college names take into the professional ranks.

Purdue Boilermakers and Valparaiso Beacons both sit on the schedule, giving it a distinctly Indiana cast, since all three programmes are based in the same state. Purdue plays a level up, in the Football Bowl Subdivision, which makes that fixture a rare test against bigger-conference opposition; Valparaiso, at the same level as Sycamores, is the more even meeting of the two. A Redhawks side rounds out the opponents from further afield, and every name on the list plays college football, not the NFL.

Sycamores have not made the step from the Football Championship Subdivision up to professional competition, and nothing in the fixtures so far suggests that step is close.