Now, the fun begins.

With all due respect to Illinois State and Indiana State, the Eastern football team’s blowout victories against them mean virtually nothing compared to the test that lays ahead.

Although Southeast Missouri and Austin Peay were predicted to finish tied for last in the Ohio Valley Conference in the Preseason Coaches’ Poll, both games are expected to pose a much bigger challenge than the team say in the first two weeks of the season.

After his team man-handled the Sycamores 31-0 Saturday in Terre Haute, Ind., one of the first things Eastern head coach Bob Spoo talked about is the competition change the team will face now that the main portion of its non-conference play is finished.

“Illinois State and Indiana State are teams that are in the process of developing their programs again,” Spoo said. “So we’re playing against teams that don’t have quite the experience that the teams we’re going to be playing in the next couple of weeks will have.

“Both Southeast Missouri and Austin Peay, those are teams that were young a few years ago but are now of age, so those next couple of games are going to be a lot tougher than these first two,” Spoo said.

Even though Southeast Missouri and Austin Peay are expected to be bottom-feeders in the OVC, the Panthers cannot take them lightly. One reason is the obvious: any team can beat any team on any day, and the Panthers know that. But the intensity needs to be tenfold in these games as a slip-up against the Redhawks or Governors means a heckuva lot more than a slip-up against Illinois State or Indiana State, regardless of how bad those programs may be at the time. The ultimate goal for any team, in any sport, in any conference, is to come away as conference champions. Obviously, a playoff spot and a chance for a national title is always the No. 1 idea, but a conference championship gives a school bragging rights for an entire year and is the first step toward achieving success on a national level.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Either way, the Panthers need to be successful in the OVC to have a successful season, and that starts this weekend in Cape Girardeau, Mo.

The players know it’s a week-by-week process toward a conference championship, and at this point a victory against Southeast Missouri means just as much as a victory against conference-favorite Eastern Kentucky.

The players know it. The coaches know it. Now it’s time for them to show it.

Yup. The fun begins Saturday.

Collin Whitchurch can be reached at

581-7944 or cfwhitchurch@eiu.edu.

Volunteers from the city and the university headed out into the streets of Charleston Tuesday, the first day of the third annual “Meet-‘n-Greet.”

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