Northern Illinois senior defensive end Jake Coffman earned Mid-American Conference West Division Player of the Week Monday for his work in Friday's 71-3 win at Eastern Michigan.

Coffman had five solo tackles, one sack, two tackles for loss and a forced fumble as the Huskies won their ninth straight game. It's the 10th week in a row a player from Northern has claimed one of the MAC West honors given for offense, defense or special teams each week.

It's the second time Coffman, a finalist for the Lowes Senior CLASS Award, has received the honor.

Northern's defense held Eastern Michigan to 160 yards of total offense on 64 plays, including a season-low 11 passing yards.

The Huskies play MAC East champ Miami Friday at 6 p.m. at Detroit's Ford Field in the league championship game on ESPN2.

after a long football season, the Dose is taking a much needed break.

But I have to leave you something.

well, you know by now that a favorite Dose topic is bad rap songs made by sports teams...so I found this beauty for you ....

Turnovers plague Cadets in title game loss to Rockford Boylan...

Marmion Academy is set to try to win the first official state championship in Aurora history tomorrow against Rockford Boylan in the Class 6A title game at the University of Illinois...

Congrats to the Marmion Academy linebacker/running back, who is the Cadets' first POY since "Touchdown" Tom Koutsous in 1998.
Click here to read about Lally in his POY profile.

as Marmion Academy heads to state, becoming just the 2nd team from Aurora to ever reach an IHSA championship game.

Apparently the league is saying, "Go west, young men, go west."

Strange, though, isn't it that the Big Ten Conference would have to wait until 24 hours before game time before deciding to change the rules -- for safety reasons -- for the Illinois vs. Northwestern college football game at Wrigley Field?

When both teams are on offense, they will move to the west end zone (along the third base line) because it's tight quarters on the other endzone with only a foot between the padded wall and the end of the endzone. Just curious, though. If one of the teams' defensive players returns an interception for a score in that east end zone, will they kick the extra point there or head to the west. Could be a factor, I suppose, if the wind is howling and "blowing out."

Are their football purists similar to those so-called baseball purists? Won't they have a field day if that wind is howling and has a significant impact on the respective coaches' game strategy?

It's just a suggestion, but with all the well-founded concern about concussions in the sport at all levels these days, maybe they should have just had the players don those Michelin man-like suits that they use in bars for sumo-like wrestling mathces. Better to be safe than sorry.

It's gonna be a circus at the shrine at Clark and Addison, so why not go the whole nine yards ? Give or take a foot or two.

Northern Illinois Lauren Wicinski of Geneva has been named Freshman of the Year and Player of the Year in the Mid-American Conference.

Awards were announced at the league's banquet tonight in Toledo where the top eight teams have gathered for the start of the MAC Tournament Friday morning. Wicinski, who earned MAC West Player of the Week five times this season, is ranked in the top 10 nationally in three individual categories and lead the league in all of them.

For more coverage on the youngster, who is the daughter of Geneva football coach Rob Wicinski and his wife Gina, see our story in tomorrow's Beacon News.

In other news from the banquet, two other NIU players with area ties were also honored. The Huskies' setter, Kristin Hoffman of Batavia, was named first team All-MAC and Libero Maddie Hughes of St. Charles North earned second team honors.

I enjoy Deadspin - I really do - but sometimes, well, its just a little slow with things.

Loyal SportsBeacon readers know that we've covered the topic of bad 80's sports songs a few times. The first was in this post, from March, 2008.
Here's another of ours from January, 2009 and November of last year.
It's okay, Deadspin. I ain't mad. And, finding the Lakers' rap song was a good find...

sports fails are hilarious.
soccer

track

football

in Division I football.
In honor of Dan Hawkins being fired today, I give you one of the greatest coaching rants of all time.

So - the newly minted World Series champions are wondering why our President hasn't called them yet to congratulate their victory.

Since I doubt these midterm elections had anything to do with that, we're left with the obvious - it's punishment for stealing Don't Stop Believing as your theme.

The nation might not know of your piracy, Giants fans, but this President sure does.
South. Side.

Eat it.