From The Roanoke Times

Radford club football team to face SVU
College Notebook

By Doug Doughty | The Roanoke Times

No college football game could be harder to handicap than Saturday's matchup in Buena Vista between host Southern Virginia and Radford.

Radford (3-3) has a club team whose opponents to date have included an online university, Columbia Southern, as well as the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Southern Virginia (1-7), an independent NAIA team, has an upcoming game with Webber International but already has faced a couple of Division I-AA foes in Morehead State and Gardner-Webb.

Southern Virginia's lone victory has come over the other club team on its schedule, George Mason. A homecoming crowd watched Southern Virginia roll to a 51-12 victory at the Parry McCluer High School field that it calls home.

"Radford is much better than George Mason," Southern Virginia coach DeLane Fitzgerald said. "They're going to play two weeks from now, and I think you'll see that."

Shortly after he was elevated to the head-coaching job Feb. 9, Fitzgerald contacted Radford's club team about a game this season. The Highlanders were 0-6 last season in their first year of club football.

"Are we favored?" Fitzgerald said. "Yeah, we should be favored this week. Can they beat us? Absolutely. I don't think there's any doubt they can come in here and beat us.

"Radford's got some kids on their team that I think I'd enjoy coaching."

Radford's club team is not affiliated with the Highlanders' athletic program and must go through the same process for funding that other clubs do. Radford athletic director Robert Lineburg said he has not been a party to any discussions about a possible intercollegiate football program.

"It's not something that I would rule out," Lineburg said, "but, it's such a monumental undertaking."

The president of the Radford football club is Jeremy Sturgill, a two-way All-Three Rivers District selection who played for Lineburg's father at Radford High School.

Sturgill plays nose tackle and a little fullback for the Radford team and also helped set up a schedule that includes club teams from the University of North Carolina and South Carolina. North Carolina defeated Radford 2-0 at Henry Stadium in Chapel Hill.

"That's the field where they play field hockey," said Sturgill, who aspires to a career in sports administration. "Playing football with all those field-hockey lines out there, now that was a little different!"