State’s newest football program completes first spring practice

INDIANAPOLIS – Indiana’s newest college football program doesn’t even have a locker room yet.\nThe 42 players who completed three weeks of spring drills at Marian College had to dress in their dorm rooms and walk or drive a half-mile to practice. The equipment had to be loaded onto and off of pickup trucks each way.\nDespite the logistical problems, coach Ted Karras Jr. said Tuesday, the first spring practice went well for Marian, a private NAIA-affiliated school of about 1,800 students on the west side of Indianapolis.\n“I thought it was a successful spring. I’ll give it a B-minus,” said Karras, who coached at Rose-Hulman for three years before coming to Marian last year to begin preparing for football’s debut at the school. “We got 12 good practices in. Guys learned our base offensive and defensive systems. Now we have a whole group of 50-plus joining us in August.”\nMarian, which will join the Mid-States Football Association’s Mideast League, will be the 21st football-playing college in Indiana and the first new football school in the state since St. Francis in 1998. The St. Francis Cougars, also in the Mid-States’ Mideast League, became an NAIA power within their first few years and have a current regular-season winning streak of 51 straight regular season games and three straight NAIA playoff runner-up finishes.\nAll but six of the 42 players who participated in Marian’s spring practice were freshmen, most of them recruited from the Indianapolis and central Indiana areas, Karras said.\n“I don’t know if the word is difficult. Yeah, it’s challenging,” he said of starting a football program from scratch. “It can be difficult at times. The logistic issues we overcame. But overall it’s been a success story so far.”\nMarian’s new locker facilities will be in place by July, so that problem will be solved in time for the start of practice in August, when another 50-plus players will join the team, Karras said.\nKarras, the son of former NFL player Ted Karras Sr. and nephew of actor and former NFL star Alex Karras, compiled a 14-16 record in his three years at Rose-Hulman. Before that, he was offensive coordinator at St. Xavier University in Chicago and an assistant at St. Francis, Ill., and Lake Forest College. He also was an All-State player at Hobart High School in 1982 and the head coach at Andrean from 1996-98.\nHis own NFL career included one game with the Washington Redskins in 1987.\n“It’s pretty much different,” he said of moving from high school to college coaching. “You don’t have to teach classes during the day. Our biggest time has been spent recruiting.\n“But football’s football, and systems are systems. You have more mature kids and you’re in a college setting. I like the college setting much better,” he said.\nThe Knights open their inaugural season on Sept. 1 at William Penn in Oskaloosa, Iowa.\nMarian’s inaugural class of recruits includes safety Richard El, a two-time All-State player at Indianapolis Ben Davis and transfer from Harper, a junior college in Palatine, Ill., and receiver Jake Scott, a two-time All-Stater at Indian Creek in Morgantown, Ind. and a transfer from Anderson University. The signees also included five players from Warren Central, the four-time defending Class 5A champion in Indiana.