ALLENDALE, Michigan — The Grand Valley State University football team has won 77 of its last 82 games and three of the last four Division II national championships, so if you think for one second that Ernie Vadas and his crew are going to stop toasting deviled eggs before every game, you’ve severely underestimated the passion of the Laker fan base.

Vadas didn’t start the deviled-egg tradition, but like most diehard sports fans, Ernie is superstitious, and he isn’t about to change anything in his weekly routine. His wife Pat makes the eggs, but unlike her husband, she doesn’t always hit the road with the team.

"I go to every game, home and away," Vadas said. "There are away games when I’ll get there and people will ask if Pat is there. If she’s not, they ask if I brought the eggs. I tell them yes, and then they ask ‘How you doing, Ern?’ The eggs are more important than I am."

So it goes in the Division II world, where it sometimes seems like everybody knows your name.

Vadas passes out the eggs in the tailgating area about one hour before kickoff. In ceremonial fashion, he explains the rules to the newcomers and makes sure nobody eats an egg before he cheers "One, two, three…victory!" The merriment culminates the experience, and the eggs are devoured. Ernie has done his part for the team and now he’s ready to head into the stadium to cheer the Lakers to victory.

Also a Penn State fan, Vadas treasures his Saturdays supporting the Grand Valley program.

"The president comes by and says hello. We wave to the head coach and he knows us by our names," Vadas said. "I have a better opportunity of getting an audience with the pope than a meeting with Joe Paterno. It’s not like that at Grand Valley. It’s all one big happy family."

It’s an attitude that permeates every inch of Grand Valley. Driving on to the campus for the first time, it feels like you’ve come back home. Smiling faces welcome you everywhere you turn — at a softball invitational, in a residential quad and even in the Fresh Food Factory, the campus dining hall where you can easily lose yourself under a pile of waffles or drown in a bowl of cream of broccoli soup with cheese sprinkled on top.

People are friendly, happy and excited to be there. But it wasn’t always like it is today. Grand Valley has gone from a commuter campus to a school that encourages students to live on the grounds. The change has benefited the athletics program, but the impact certainly has worked both ways.

"In 1996, we had 1,600 beds. Now we have 5,314," said Athletics Director Tim Selgo. "We’re a residential campus now, and it’s allowed us to really generate great student support for our athletics events. In some respects, our atmosphere might be better than a lot of Division I schools because of the great student support we get."

Selgo understands that Grand Valley isn’t going to get 100,000 fans to its football games. He does note, however, that the Lakers average 11,500 fans to their games, and almost half of those fans are students.

The enthusiasm spreads from the gridiron to Grand Valley’s other 18 sports teams, all of which qualified for the postseason during the 2005-06 academic year and helped the university to its third consecutive Directors’ Cup.

Three hours before a football game against Mercyhurst, the women’s volleyball team — also undefeated and the defending national champion — took the court in front of nearly 1,000 people. The arena wasn’t full, but you would not have known it from the deafening noise that marked the end of every point. Excitement bounced off the walls of the gym, making it too loud to carry on a conversation but too exhilarating to ever want to leave.

The top-ranked Lakers went on to lose their first match of the season to No. 9 Hillsdale, which had a strong following of its own despite being nearly three hours to the southeast of the Allendale campus. Grand Valley fans were disappointed, but they still had the evening’s festivities to look forward to.

Exiting the arena, the tailgating area was just a stone’s throw away, inviting visitors to share a drink, hot dog or even a delicious deviled egg.

"We tried to come last year, but it was crowded and we couldn’t get in," said Jeanne Burnham, whose daughter Nikki is a sophomore at the school. "This year we came early enough to set things up, but it’s still hard to get a ticket. We’re standing-room only."

Weaving between parked cars and tailgating festivities, you stumble on a few guys like Ernie and some like Matt Griewahn, a Grand Valley graduate who paints his face before every football game, sticks bolts in his neck and goes by the nickname Frankenstein.

While some presidents might shy away from the face-painting crowd, Thomas Haas isn’t your normal president. A former serviceman in the United States Coast Guard, Haas coached softball at his alma mater. He stands on campus looking ready to have a catch with anybody who has a glove.

After spending parts of the afternoon by the softball field and volleyball court, Haas hangs out with the proud Grand Valley students during the third quarter of every home football game.

"You’ll see respectful students really cheering on their university, not rooting against the other team," Haas said. "The sportsmanship really shows and it emanates from the athletics program to other parts of the university."

As much pride as the entire community takes in the university’s athletics success, they are more proud of the school’s academic accomplishments. This year’s freshman class boasts an average high school grade-point average of 3.53.

"This institution just exudes quality," Haas said. "We’re committed to academic excellence and also to developing the individual student to his or her potential. The student-athletes we have here are dedicated to their sports and I’m glad to see that, but they’re also very much dedicated to their academic success as well."

Haas and Selgo focus tightly on Division II’s balanced philosophy.

‘We’re as proud of what our kids have done academically as what they’ve done athletically," Selgo said. "More than 50 percent of our student-athletes achieve a 3.0 every semester, and it’s been like that for a few years now. As great as our success has been athletically, we haven’t lost focus on what’s most important and that’s kids being here to get their degrees."

While the school’s athletics success is more than evident as you walk through the arena and take in the multitude of national championship trophies, there are no photographs on the walls of alumni in professional uniforms. As much success as they find on the college courts and playing fields, few Grand Valley student-athletes move on to the professional level.

Currently, former baseball player Matt Thornton pitches for the Chicago White Sox and former football student-athlete David Kircus is a wide receiver for the Denver Broncos.

"Even with all the success we’ve had, we have two individuals in professional sports right now," Selgo said. "We’re tremendously proud of those guys, but the fact of the matter is that 99.9 percent of our student-athletes will never have a chance to play professional sports. They need to be here to get their degrees."

Now in his third year as head football coach at Grand Valley, Chuck Martin led the Lakers to the 2005 national championship in his second year at the helm. Martin stresses the importance of balance in the lives of his student-athletes and demands nothing less than their very best, both on and off the field.

"We stress academics and football. They’re both number one," Martin said. "Too many times we allow kids to accept the fact that it’s hard to be a college athlete. Yes, it takes some commitment and sacrifice, but you can do it all. If you want to be good in football and in the classroom, those have to be your priorities. Our kids do a great job of that."

Like Selgo, Martin is well aware that most of his players are going to move on to a professional world that doesn’t include football. He wants them to be prepared for that experience.

"If you have a big, fat championship ring, that doesn’t mean you can’t live on the streets and be dirt broke," said Martin. "I hope we win a lot of games and our kids have a lot of great memories, but when they go on job interviews, (those memories) won’t get them a job."

With the football team shooting for a fourth national title in five years, the volleyball and women’s basketball teams defending championships and 16 other sports that made postseason competition last year, Haas, Selgo and other stakeholders are repeatedly asked about a jump to Division I.

They understand that every victory will bring more questions, but it’s clear that they’re happy to be in Division II.

"We feel that we’re in the right spot for Grand Valley at this time. We’ve found our niche in college athletics," Selgo said. "If you ask the constituents of any school what they want to see out of their intercollegiate athletics programs, I think they’d say that they want the student-athletes to be great citizens and do a great job representing the school.

"They want to see the teams win and they don’t want the athletics programs to cost the school an arm and a leg. We’re offering 19 sports programs here, we’re highly successful in our division and we do it at a cost far less than Division I institutions. When you add all those things together, it doesn’t make sense at all to even consider reclassifying."

When you walk down by the baseball field, it’s impossible not to notice the banners that boast of conference championships, NCAA tournament appearances and trips to the Division II Baseball Championship.

You’d think that Grand Valley throws as many scholarship dollars as it can at baseball recruits to achieve that kind of success, but it’s not the case. The Lakers allocate only three scholarships to their baseball program, far under the Division II limit of nine.

"We have a tremendous coaching staff throughout our athletics programs and we believe that if we have some athletics money, we have a great chance of getting kids to come here," Selgo said. "We may not have as much as some, but we think we can be competitive nationally given the situation we have on campus."

***

After a noisy volleyball game and a town outing to the football field, the campus is quiet on Sunday morning. Students walk around wearing sweats and baseball caps. They pick up food to take back to their dorm rooms and get ready to hunker down to do schoolwork that they ignored on Friday and Saturday.

Afternoon rolls around and it becomes apparent that Grand Valley weekends don’t finish with football games on Saturday night. There’s a women’s soccer game on Sunday, and, yes, the Laker team is a national power in that sport as well.

The crowd is sparse at the beginning, but by the end of the first half hundreds of people are cheering for the Lakers, including junior Christian Goetz, who has taken fashion lessons from Frankenstein and sports a pristinely painted face.

Goetz didn’t attend the football game the night before, but he wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to cheer for the women’s soccer team, which went on to beat Ashland, 2-0.

"I like to support my team. I’m out here every game," Goetz said. "Grand Valley has very competitive sports and it’s fun to go to any kind of sporting event out here. I know most of the soccer team, a lot of the swimmers and tennis players. They’re friendly and students like the rest of us."

The weekend’s athletics events come to a close and fans head back to their cars and stroll up to the dorms. Some stay out tossing a football, refusing to close the book on a perfect weekend on a Division II campus.