Is there anything in sport more annoying than a fluffed-up alum boasting about his alma mater's Football team? Probably not.

But the time has come.

Anyone here notice BALL STATE IS 11-0?

Our Cardinals. Average winning margin of 20.8. No.15 in the latest Bowl Championship Series standings. Ahead of probable Big East champion Cincinnati, ahead of Pacific-10 Rose Bowl leader Oregon State.

Way ahead of Kansas State, which a few years back edged us out 76-0.

Way ahead of Auburn, which barely escaped our upset trap in 2005 by the narrow margin of 63-3. That came two weeks after the 56-0 Iowa cliffhanger, and two weeks before the Boston College game, which was really a lot closer than the 38-0 score indicated.

But now it's no more Mr. Nice Guy.

There hasn't been a season like this on campus since my dorm intramural flag Football team took a 9-0 record into the quarterfinals. We lost because of a horrible, awful, scandalous holding call. But 33 years later, who's bitter?

Four unbeatens remain in major college Football, and the other three are rated ahead of us. But Ball State is the only one named after a bunch of brothers who made their fortune producing glass jars.

So you can think of my school the next time you're considering potential bowl matchups -- or canning tomatoes.

Our Cardinals still have a few things to settle. Let the cheers begin.

We want Alabama!

We want Texas!

Actually, we want ... Western Michigan!

That's tonight, when Our Cardinals go for a perfect regular season.

We won last Wednesday, and the Tuesday before that, and the Wednesday before that. Our Cardinals have solved the problem of getting lost in the SEC-Big 12-Big Ten shuffle on Saturdays.

Never play on Saturday.

Schedule Tuesdays instead. If it's good enough for bridge clubs and sanitation board hearings, it's good enough for Our Cardinals. And we can still get home in time to watch David Letterman, another old Ball Stater.

Incidentally, ESPN moved tonight's kickoff back an hour. One more barrier broken. You're not really important until television starts messing around with your start times.

Now we're just like Notre Dame. Only without the snowballs.

And we beat Navy worse.

By now, you're undoubtedly a little curious about this juggernaut.

We have a 5-6 tailback, MiQuale Lewis, who's fourth in the nation in rushing.

We have a 32-year-old former auto worker and Marine, Brandon Crawford, who has made seven tackles for loss from defensive end.

We have a quarterback, Nate Davis, who is that rarest of birds in 2008 -- ranked in the top 10 in passing efficiency and not playing for a Big12 team.

We have a bunch of law-abiding lads. Our Cardinals have had 29 penalties in 11 games, fewest in the nation.

We have Brady Hoke, one of 18 major college head Football coaches working at his alma mater. He's been stubborn about making too much of the big picture. Takes it one game at a time.

"If we don't, we're going to go backward," he said. "We don't want to go backward."

No, what we want is to win a bowl game. Our Cardinals have never done that, though we did tie Tennessee State once in the Grantland Rice Bowl.

We should do it now. The fancy schools will be showing up in Muncie soon to woo Hoke. (Directions: You go to Cowan and turn north). Davis is a junior but will have an eye on the NFL.

By the way, until we became a national power, the most decorated Cardinal ever is Brad Maynard, who is still with the Chicago Bears . What's the moral of the story, when your best player in history is a punter? That's Our Cardinals.

Mike Lopresti also writes for Gannett News Service