The Grand Valley State Lakers football team represent Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in NCAA Division II football. After a national runner-up finish in 2001, losing to the University of North Dakota in the national championship game, GVSU completed the 2002 season with a perfect 14–0 record by defeating Valdosta State University, and winning the school's first-ever NCAA Division II national football championship. GVSU followed that success with a second national championship in 2003 with a 13–1 record, avenging the 2001 loss and defeating North Dakota in the championship game. GVSU was knocked out from the playoffs in 2004 by North Dakota in the now realigned playoff regions in the Northwest Regional Finals. In 2005 and 2006 GVSU won back-to-back National Championships, finishing both seasons undefeated. In 2007 the Lakers ran their win streak to 40 games, setting the NCAA Division II record for longest consecutive win streak; this streak ended a loss to Northwest Missouri State in the 2007 National Semi-Final Game. In the 21st century, GVSU's win percentage (.880, 147-20) and average margin of victory have outpaced such teams as the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, and Ohio State University; NCAA Division III's Mount Union College has outpaced GVSU with a win percentage of .960 (167-7). Since inception, GVSU's overall winning percentage is .729 (339-125-3), trailing only Michigan, Notre Dame and Old Dominion among teams from all NCAA divisions. Their all time home record is 127–31–1.
Read more about Grand Valley State Lakers Football: Lakers in The NFL
Famous quotes containing the words grand, valley, state and/or football:
“You’re a grand old flag;
You’re a high-flying flag.
And forever in peace may you wave.”
—George M. Cohan (1878–1942)
“The wide wonder of Broadway is disconsolate in the daytime; but gaudily glorious at night, with a milling crowd filling sidewalk and roadway, silent, going up, going down, between upstanding banks of brilliant lights, each building braided and embossed with glowing, many-coloured bulbs of man-rayed luminance. A glowing valley of the shadow of life. The strolling crowd went slowly by through the kinematically divine thoroughfare of New York.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“[17th-century] Puritans were the first modern parents. Like many of us, they looked on their treatment of children as a test of their own self-control. Their goal was not to simply to ensure the child’s duty to the family, but to help him or her make personal, individual commitments. They were the first authors to state that children must obey God rather than parents, in case of a clear conflict.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“In this dream that dogs me I am part
Of a silent crowd walking under a wall,
Leaving a football match, perhaps, or a pit,
All moving the same way.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)