Over the last 10 seasons, the Ferris State Bulldogs have cemented themselves as blue blood in the world of DII college football, making the playoffs nine consecutive seasons which is the most of any DII team.
To pair along with the consecutive playoff births the Bulldogs have reached the national championship three times and the semi-finals four times.
Ever since winning their first DII national title in 2021, championships have been the expectation for the Ferris State football team and the players are aware of that.
“The standard here is winning national championships,” senior quarterback Trinidad Chambliss said. “We have to take it game by game, we all hate losing way more than we love winning.”
In 2022, the Bulldogs would again live up to that standard claiming back-to-back national titles.
In 2023, however, Ferris’s season would be cut short in the first round of the playoffs at the hands of rival Grand Valley State University.
Not being able to reach the expectations and the standard of winning at the highest level was something that head coach Tony Annese had to think about going into the off-season.
“Are we growing as a program,” Annese said. “Are we too complacent? I was one that really had to do an evaluation on that. We talked a lot about accountability in the offseason.”
Complacency is a difficult topic to handle when talking about winning back-to-back national championships because there is nowhere else to go. You’ve reached the pinnacle of the sport and that is every team’s desire at the end of the day.
“I’d say it was a little bit of complacency,” Chambliss said. “After the back-to-back championships we were on a pretty big high, we almost got used to winning”
This season, however, the Bulldogs have come into the year with the same goals but have added more discipline and a chip on their shoulder
“It started with a chip on our shoulder about how the season ended last year,” Annese said. “Guys came into winter conditioning and worked hard.”
The pressure for the team this year is evident and the players have welcomed that pressure.
“We signed up for this,” Chambliss said. “We know what is at stake for the program and we know we have to do our jobs to be successful, it is kind of stressful but its a long season we can’t let that get to us.”
Looking ahead to this season, the Bulldogs will be doing everything they can to add another trophy to their collection.
Even with how college football is today with so much roster turnover and new faces each year, Ferris is returning a lot of production and has added key pieces through the recruiting trail and the transfer portal.
The players know how important cohesion at this level is.
“Everyone is on the same page, the camaraderie that we have on this team has really shown up in camp,” Chambliss said. “The chemistry we have is special.”
Ferris will open up their season on the road on Saturday, August 31, against the nationally ranked No.5 team Pittsburg State.