Are This Year's Cardinals For Real?

Rankings can be dangerous. Exciting, provoking and misleading, too.

's football team began the season ranked fourth nationally by D3football.com based on 14 returning offensive and defensive starters to a program that reached the quarterfinals of the 2010 NCAA Division III Playoffs.

After losing this season's opener to the unranked University of Redlands in California, the Cardinals dropped to 15th, then spiked a spot to 14th after rebounding against Bethel University of the NAIA.

Rankings aside, let's figure out who  really is this year.

Back up. Here's who they want to be: national champions.

Here's who they are right now: second best in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin — based on those dangerous, exciting, provoking, misleading rankings. (Wheaton College is seventh in the nation).

Confusing, isn't it?

Truth is nobody knows for certain, because last year was last year, it's too early this season to tell, and you're only as good as your last game anyway. And by last game for , I don't mean Bethel. I mean last game of the season — the finale is the mark of a team, of a season.

Coach John Thorne hasn't come right out and said it, but it's clear his team's season doesn't really begin until the CCIW opener at Carthage College in Week 4. Saturday's home game against Olivet College? Just another tune-up (the final tune-up) before the Cardinals try to sweep the league again.

"We still have a lot of penalties, so we've got to really work hard on that," Thorne told Patch after beating Bethel 70-26 on Sept. 10 at Benedetti-Wehrli Stadium. "But we played a lot more physical, much faster, executed a lot better so now we've got to get ready for conference. We've got one more try."

After the league opener the Cardinals will have four games to prepare for a home game with Wheaton College on Nov. 5. That's the regular season in a nutshell. It's a game that will decide the conference, shake up the national rankings and fuel postseason talk.

But even then, we still won't know the Cardinals true identity. The goal of becoming national champs — based on the idea that this year's group has nothing left to attain besides the title of all titles — simply has to play out on the football field.

Right now there's no reason to panic in downtown Naperville, no cause for barnstorming Brainard Street en route to Thorne's office, and no reason to celebrate either.

"We have to keep experimenting with different players and different schemes to make sure that by the time we start playing conference games, we'll really know what team we have," Thorne said in a release.

The talking points?

• The Cardinals allowed 35 points against Redlands in Week 1. Then they put up 70 on Bethel on Week 2.
• Their interception leader of a year ago, preseason All-American Josh McLeod, already has one. He also admitted that perhaps the Cardinals didn't take Redlands seriously in the opener. That seems like a sign of maturity.
• Fellow All-American Kyle Fiedorowicz has three touchdowns through two games, but the better sign is that the team seems to have designed the plays that will keep him unstoppable this year.

There are other flashpoints, like whether the defense fizzles or flourishes after an eight-sack game (tying a school-record), but that remains fuzzy at best.

One thing's clear: The 2011 Cardinals are worth watching. And their story is worth following. To an ending only the football gods know.