College football: Dayton needs to skip ‘first-game jitters’ against Eastern Illinois

“I’ve had people ask where they can buy one like this,” Chamberlin said. “I created this hat. The hat is three years old. My skin doctor told me, ‘Chamberlain, you’ve got to throw that visor away and get a big brimmed hat.’ My wife and I were on vacation out west, and I saw this hat. I said, ‘I need that hat,’ so I got it. Then I said, ‘I need Dayton on it,’ because my visor always has Dayton on it. So I went up to the bookstore and asked, ‘Hey, do you have any kind of Dayton band to put on it?’ All they had was this rhinestone, so I said, ‘I’ll take it.’”

“You could make some money selling them,” someone told Chamberlin.

“When I retire,” he joked.

It’s hard to imagine Dayton football without Chamberlin, who has been with the program since he was a player in the 1970s, though for the last 22 months, it’s also been hard to imagine his team in action in a game that counts. That’s how long it has been since Dayton played a regular-season football game.

The wait ends at 1 p.m Saturday when the Flyers open the season against Eastern Illinois at Welcome Stadium. The original opener, scheduled for last Saturday, was cancelled because of positive COVID-19 tests at Robert Morris.

Dayton and Marist were the only Pioneer Football League teams to opt out of the six-game spring season, and ironically, both had their openers last weekend cancelled. Marist couldn’t play because of COVID issues at Georgetown.

One of the newest PFL members, St. Thomas, which has 100 percent of its players vaccinated, also saw its opener cancelled because of COVID protocols at St. Francis, Ill.

Those were the only three games cancelled at the top two levels of college football last weekend.

For Dayton, the challenge this week comes with playing a team that has already played two games. Eastern Illinois opened the season with a 26-21 loss to Indiana State and then lost 46-0 to South Carolina.

“We’re going to have to play not a typical first game,” Chamberlin said, “because in the first game you make those mistakes, you have the turnovers, you have the penalties, that sort of thing, and then you work on that after your first game and get better in your second game. Well, that’s what Eastern Illinois already got to do. So we have to skip those first-game jitters and go right to the idea of executing better.”

This is the first meeting between Dayton and Eastern Illinois, which finished 2-16 in coach Adam Cushing’s first two seasons. The team finished 1-5 in a six-game spring season in the Ohio Valley Conference. In 2019, the last complete season, the Panthers were 1-11 overall and 1-7 in the OVC.

Eastern Illinois’ last winning season came in 2017 when it was 6-5. It last reached the FCS playoffs in 2015. It reached the FCS quarterfinals in 2013 when future NFL quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was leading the offense.

Like Dayton, which has seen alums Chuck Noll, Jon Gruden and now Brandon Staley, of the Los Angeles Chargers, reach the NFL as head coaches, Eastern Illinois has the distinction of producing three NFL head coaches: Sean Payton; Mike Shanahan; and Brad Childress.

The current Eastern Illinois roster includes: quarterback Otto Kuhns, who completed 14 of 29 passes for 253 yards with no touchdowns and two interceptions in the first two games; running back Harrison Bey-Buie, who leads the running game with 69 yards on 16 carries; and wide receiver Tyler Ringwood, who has five catches for 116 yards.

Dayton counters with an offense that has scored in 487 straight games. That’s an FCS record and the longest active streak in all of college football.

Dayton’s last touchdown was a 4-yard run by quarterback Jack Cook in the third quarter of a 51-38 victory against Butler on Nov. 23, 2019. Jack Chisholm ran for 166 yards that day but did’t find the end zone. He’s thrilled to get the chance this week.

“I’m very excited, but I’m not going to lie, I’m a little nervous, too,” Chisholm said. “I mean it’s been almost two years since the last time I carried a ball in a real game. I’m just going to have to get that first hit over with and get sed to that feeling again. I think I’ll be ready to go.”

SATURDAY’S GAME

Eastern Illinois at Dayton, 1 p.m., 1290, 95.7