THE LATEST LINE: NOW THE INDIANS' REAL YEAR KICKS OFF

Opening rout at hands of Marshall basically meant nothing.

Southeast Missouri State University's season-opening 63-7 loss at Marshall Thursday night gave about as much an indication of what lies ahead for the Indians this year as if they had beaten a lower-division patsy by the same score.

Absolutely nothing.

Sure, it would have been nice for Tim Billings' first SEMO football team to play the potent Thundering Herd a bit closer.

But the final score was certainly not a surprise. It was fairly predictable, considering that Marshall is one of the better I-A teams in the country and SEMO has been a struggling I-AA squad.

It's admirable that Billings professed confidence prior to the game that the Indians could compete with the Thundering Herd. And SEMO did compete, at least for a while. To the Indians' credit, they stood toe to toe with Marshall for more than a quarter and showed plenty both offensive and defensively before finally wearing down.

The truth is, however, it would have taken something of a minor miracle for the contest to be seriously competitive from start to finish. That's almost always the way these "guarantee" games play out. The lower-division team -- in this case SEMO -- collects a big chunk of money -- in this case $120,000. Then the higher-division team -- in this case Marshall -- has some fun and pretty well names the score as it tunes up for bigger foes down the road.

Now, the "real" season begins. For the rest of the campaign, the Indians will be playing nothing but fellow I-AA teams, quite a few of whom they should have a realistic shot at beating and many of whom they should definitely be competitive with.

The loss to Marshall counts on their record, but in reality it was nothing more than a preseason game for the Indians.

Starting Saturday at SIU, things will begin to count for real. And that's when the season will truly get interesting.

* A couple of more final thoughts on Thursday's season opener.

Actually, for almost a half, I was very impressed by the Indians. I thought they showed some solid I-AA talent on both offense and defense, with plenty of speed on the field.

And there's no doubt that quarterback Rashad West is a truly special player, not just for the I-AA level but for any level, as Marshall coach Bob Pruett was quick to point out.

Competing against some extremely high-level athletes, West stood out and was without question one of the better players on the field -- for either squad.

* Word is that two more ex-SEMO basketball players have found work in the pro ranks.

Mike Branson and Brian Bunche, two key members of last year's Indian squad, reportedly recently hooked up with the team in the Netherlands that already had the services of SEMO products Calvert White and Eelco Derks.

* There weren't a whole lot of surprises during Friday night's opening of the area high school football season, but I bet Scott City's Rams turned some heads by knocking off Malden.

With the Rams graduating their entire backfield off last year's outstanding team, and with Malden returning all but a few starters from a year ago, a lot of folks figured the Green Wave would get revenge for Scott City's 1999 playoff romp.

But it didn't happen, and the Rams are again looking like one of the area's premier small-school squads.

~Marty Mishow is a sports writer for the Southeast Missourian