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DAVENPORT, Iowa — Just as the St. Ambrose Fighting Bees football team started two-a-days on Tuesday so did Jason Dannelly. The only difference is that Dannelly’s two-a-days cover eight states and over 2,700 miles in six days. Dannelly
is the inventor and operator of NAIAFootball.net and writer/editor of NAIA
Preview, a monthly magazine on all of the NAIA football teams across the
country, all of which he does all by himself. His Two-A-Day tour began on
Tuesday on the campus of St. Ambrose. Fighting Bees football players reported to the school on
Monday and began testing and practice early Tuesday morning. Dannelly, who
has the Fighting Bees ranked sixth in his preseason poll, was on hand for
the morning lifting session and even made the trip down to Brady Street
Stadium to watch players get timed in the 40-yard dash and the shuttle
drill. After a quick lunch, Dannelly visited with some of the
players and then spoke with Fighting Bees head coach Todd Sturdy about the
upcoming season prior to departing for Bourbonnais, Ill., where he will
attend Olivet Nazarene’s 7 p.m. practice. “My former coach told me to come up and see him for a day
at two-a-days and I was like, maybe I will make a Two-A-Day tour,”
Dannelly said of how the tour got started just one year ago. “I really
feel that (the website, magazine and tour) is a grass roots effort to get
the NAIA more nationally known and bring in more student athletes to these
schools.” The rest of Dannelly’s Two-A-Day tour will include stops at
Mid-States Football Association’s St. Francis (Ill.), St. Xavier, St.
Francis (Ind.), and Taylor. He is also making the trip to other schools
throughout the Midwest in hopes of spreading the news about
NAIAFootball.net and gathering some information along the way. Dannelly began the website devoted to NAIA football not long
after his playing days at Dana College, an NAIA school in Blair, Neb. His
football career was cut short his senior year after he suffered his fifth
concussion of his career. “They told me that if I wanted to eat solid foods that I
would have to stop playing football,” Dannelly said. “And I said that
I would kind of like to do that.” He was then asked if he wanted to be a coach to help the team
out and still be able to keep his scholarship. But Dannelly didn’t want
to have anything to do with the coaching side of it. “I just got done playing with those guys last season and I
wasn’t a graduate, so there was no reason for them to respect me,”
Dannelly said. A second option was given to him to be the Football Sports
Information Director, a job that he would fall in love with. After a few
stints in and out of sports, Dannelly got the urge to get back to the game
that he loved. “I had worked in radio since I was 16 and just loved being
involved with the media,” Dannelly said. “I then wanted to get back
into sports more, even if it was just a hobby. “That is when I came up with the idea of putting message
boards out there for Midwestern teams. I started with the KCAC, the GPAC,
the Heart of America Conference and the DAK-10. “Then I was getting calls and e-mails from people asking me
why I wasn’t covering their conference and from there it took off.” From what started as just a message board, has grown into a
major webpage and monthly magazine, something that NCAA Division II or III
does not have. “I did the website the first year and the second year I
decided that I was going to do a preseason magazine, which has now turned
into a monthly magazine,” Dannelly said. Dannelly and NAIAFootball.net are not officially affiliated
with the NAIA, but he does receive support and information when he needs
it. NAIAFootball.net and NAIA
Preview are funded solely on the subscribers to the monthly magazine.
Since Dannelly introduced the magazine last season, the number of
subscribers has almost doubled and is now over 700 and still climbing. The remainder of Dannelly’s tour will focus on getting the
word out about the magazine and the website, hoping that both will
continue to do what they have done over the past two-plus years – grow.
For more information on both, visit the website at www.naiafootball.net.
The rest of Dannelly’s tour is below: August 18 - Morning
Testing at St. Ambrose Return to the Football Homepage |
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518 West Locust
Street, Davenport, IA 52803 |
