My name is Joel Osborn. I'm a senior quarterback for Northwest Missouri State University, and I'm a math education major from Harlan, Iowa. Fall camp is well underway, and we're already into the grind. Most guys are looking for a day off right now because their bodies need it, but we can't take one off because we know that every other team in the country is practicing.

Personally, I feel like we are going to have a really good team this year. Our schedule is one of the toughest in the nation, and everyone is gunning for us because of our past successes. For us, this means that we need to take every game one at a time. Even though it's one of the biggest clichés in sports, it's especially true for our team this year if we want to accomplish our goals.

Ever since I was a freshman at Northwest, there has been one thing that has stayed consistent - our goal of winning the Conference Championship and then a National Championship. Four years ago, I was a young pup who had no clue what it took to win both of these. The starting quarterback was Josh Lamberson, and he was definitely the leader of the offense. He set all of the expectations for our team, and his confidence filtered throughout our team.

Four years later, I am now the starting quarterback that the young guys look up to. My confidence is the highest it has ever been, and I feel more comfortable than I ever have with the offense. The toughest thing to do is to not let my teammates know if I'm having a bad day because if I'm having a bad day, then it's alright for them to have a bad day too.

We play in a small town of about 10,000 people called Maryville. However, if you were to come to one of our games, you would find that about everyone in the town is there.

We get great support from the people in Maryville and our student body. Last year when we were making our run to the national championship, we played Grand Valley at our place. The temperature was about zero degrees and there was freezing rain coming down. Bearcat Stadium was packed, which tells you how loyal our fans are and how crazy they can be. They were standing and making noise the entire game, which was a huge advantage to us. Needless to say, we beat Grand Valley to make it to the championship where we came up short for the third year in a row. I really don't enjoy thinking about the championship so I'm not going to go into any details about it.

Every year there is a new crop of freshmen that are welcomed into the Bearcat family. This year's group seems to have a lot of talent throughout its class. Even though it seems like they're running around like chickens with their heads cut off some of the time, they're learning and getting better.

Since we don't have a freshman quarterback in our camp this year, I'm going to talk a little bit about one of our offensive lineman. He plays center, and his name is Robert Stough a.k.a. "Juice." He went to high school in Liberty, which is a suburb of Kansas City.

One thing about Juice is he's a fiery guy. Our offensive coordinator is always on him to set the huddle and get up to the line fast so he can make the call for the rest of the O-line.

We had our first scrimmage about a week into camp and the frosh were playing towards the end. There was a play where one of our O-lineman got pushed at the end of the play by a linebacker. Juice saw this and decided to take matters into his own hands. He proceeded to get a running start at Tyler Oglesby a.k.a. T.O., and just smoked him from the side. Of course the whistle had already blown so the play was over. Right after Juice hit T.O., all six of the referees threw up their flags. The next day after practice Coach T made Juice run 3 gassers, which is across the field and back twice. This served as a reminder for the rest of the team not to get a personal foul penalty during a game.

I think Coach T's message was sent loud and clear to the rest of our team, and I just wanted to thank Juice for his role in getting that message sent out. No one wants to run for Coach T.