Louisiana Christian Pulls Off Historic NAIA Upset of FCS Northwestern State
College football’s opening weekend produced one of the most improbable results in the sport’s modern history. Louisiana Christian, an NAIA program, beat FCS Northwestern State 42-37 on Thursday night. It is the first time an NAIA school has beaten a scholarship-offering FBS or FCS Division I program on record.
Read that again. NAIA over Division I. It happened.
Louisiana Christian, based in Pineville, is a small liberal arts university with roughly 1,300 students. Their football program does not offer athletic scholarships in the way FCS teams do. Their roster is built through walk-ons, transfers, and creative recruiting. On paper, they had no business being on the same field as Northwestern State.
Then they went out and outscored them.
The way it happened matters. Louisiana Christian’s offense hit big plays down the field. Their defense forced two turnovers in the fourth quarter. Their kicker went 3-for-3 on field goals. It was not a fluke. It was a well-coached team playing above expectations against an opponent that could not find its footing.
Northwestern State just had one of the worst nights any Division I coaching staff will experience this year. They lost the turnover battle. They failed to convert on third down. They gave up big plays through the air. And they let a smaller school outmuscle them in short-yardage situations.
Their season is not over. FCS teams recover from bad Week 1 losses all the time. But the confidence has to be rattled, and their coaches will spend the next 72 hours in film rooms trying to figure out how a game that was supposed to be a 30-point win became a five-point loss.
The bigger conversation is about the state of small-school football. NAIA programs have gotten better across the board. Many of them are catching transfers from FCS and Division II schools who want more playing time. Their coaching staffs are more experienced. Their strength programs are catching up.
Louisiana Christian is not the only NAIA team that can compete with lower-tier Division I opponents. They are just the first to prove it on the scoreboard against a scholarship program.
Concord beat Davidson 41-35 on the same weekend. South Dakota Mines beat Drake 38-35. UC Davis came from behind to beat Portland State 31-24 on a last-minute pylon dive. Week 0 in college football produced a historic amount of chaos, and Louisiana Christian was the wildest of the bunch.
The Wildcats now go into Week 2 as the most talked-about team in NAIA football. Every fan in the sport knows who they are. Every coach in NAIA is now recruiting harder because Louisiana Christian just proved what is possible.
Northwestern State fans will not forget this loss. The rest of college football will not either. Wild things happen in Week 0. This one topped everything.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
