Tucked away in a relatively small office in Memorial Auditorium is the office of Larry Papenfuss. Although his work space may be small, his experience certainly is not. Athletic Director of the college since 2004 and faculty member since 1994, Papenfuss has seemingly been involved with athletics his entire life.

Born in La Cresent, Minn. Papenfuss excelled in both basketball and baseball. All-conference in both sports, schools from all three divisions of the NCAA and NAIA expressed interest. Papenfuss chose to play both sports at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, where his older brother was the head baseball coach and assistant basketball coach.

Papenfuss transferred to University of Wisconsin-La Crosse after two years, in part because Luther did not have his intended major, Health Education. Once there, Papenfuss was originally cut trying out as a pitcher. His coach recommended he redshirt and go back out for the team the next year. In what Papenfuss describes as “the best decision he could have made,” he redshirted, and in his fifth year as a senior, Papenfuss and his teammates reached the College World Series in 1979, where he was chosen to the All-Star team. That year, La Crosse finished fifth in the country, defeating Wichita State, Oklahoma State and the University of Minnesota during the season.

After graduation in ‘79, Papenfuss took a job as a middle school health teacher in Mt. Horeb, Wisc., a small town 16 miles outside of Madison. Papenfuss taught there until 1984, when he moved to Alburquee, N.M. where he taught middle school health and physical education while pursuing his Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico. He continued to travel back to La Crosse in the summers to play amateur baseball until he married his wife Dawn in 1987.

Papenfuss worked as a graduate teaching assistant, a health educator at New Heart Cardiac Rehabilition, and as a health educator at Sandia National Laboratories, a company that did and still does help sustain and modernize nuclear weapons. Papenfuss’ job at Sandia was to teach and coordinate stress management courses for it’s employees.

“I had to be escorted [at Sandia] by a man with a machine gun,” Papenfuss said.. “He even stood next to me while I taught.”

 Papenfuss graduated in 1991 with academic distinction. Upon graduation, he and his wife elected to move back to the midwest to raise their eventual family. He took a job at Moorhead State University in 1991 as an assistant professor of health education, helping to prepare future health teachers.

In 1993, Papenfuss and his wife gave birth to their first child. Luke was born premature and was just over two pounds at birth. After a few months in the hospital, Luke was allowed to leave and remains healthy today.

In 1994, an assistant professor of health education opened up at Concordia.

“It was one of those things that I believed was more than coincidence,” Papenfuss said. “My goal was to return to a school like Luther, and here the perfect job opened up at Concordia.”

Papenfuss stormed on campus and became an active member in many faculty and campus-wide organizations, including the Faculty Executive Committee that was involved in the hiring of the last few deans of the college and helping other faculty members to understand the meaning and relationship of the college and the church.

In 1998, the Papenfuss’ second child, daughter Hannah, was born. Hannah too was premature weighing under two pounds. Hannah was also born with cerebral palsy; she will be in a wheel chair for the rest of her life.

“[Hannah] didn’t have any neurological setbacks,” Papenfuss said. “She was and still remains a bright person.”

In 2002, the athletic director at Concordia, Armin Pipho, retired early to deal with his wife’s cancer, and Papenfuss was named Interim Chair of Health and Physical Education. In the spring of 2003, Papenfuss was named the new athletic director at the college.

“They were in the process of searching for a new president of the college as well as a new dean,” Papenfuss said. “It just felt like they needed someone they trusted and knew.”

Papenfuss enjoys being the athletic director at Concordia, and is extremely proud of the integrity Concordia’s coaches and team captains have.

“I don’t think I would be the athletic director anywhere else,” Papenfuss said. “The college has a strategic plan involving academics and athletics, and athletics is now a part of the educational mission of the college.”

Papenfuss’ favorite part of his job is the Athletic Hall of Fame ceremony, inducting former Cobber athletes for accomplishments both on and off the field.

“It’s just great to be able to recognize those who give back to both academics and athletics,” Papenfuss said. “Being able to hear their stories after they’ve been away from the college for a while is really neat.”

Papenfuss’ only regret is that he doesn’t get to know as large a number of people as when he was teaching.

“It is a big job, but we work with great people from the coaches to the athletes,” Papenfuss said. “I do it because of a shared belief of the college’s mission, and because of all the great people I get to meet and interact with on a daily basis.”

Aug. 21, 2009 started out like any other day for Concordia basketball player Darrin Olmscheid. He left for work and returned home like every other day. When Olmscheid, a junior at the time, got out of his car, something didn’t feel right: He had major pain in his chest that eventually moved into his left shoulder and down his arm. Because the pain was so intense, Olmscheid told his mom that he needed to go to the hospital.

Once at the hospital in Buffalo, Minn., Olmscheid was informed that his left lung had collapsed.

“At first, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen,” Olmscheid said. “I thought I wouldn’t be able to play any contact sports again.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, pneumothorax, also known as a collapsed lung, occurs when air leaks into the space between your lungs and chest wall, creating pressure against the lung. A pneumothorax can be caused by a chest injury, certain medical procedures involving your lung, lung disease, or it may occur for no obvious reason. Depending on the cause of the pneumothorax, your lung may only partially collapse, or collapse completely.

In Olmscheid’s case, 25 percent of his lung had collapsed. He had surgery to put a chest tube in that would remove the excess air between his lung and chest wall. After six days in the Buffalo Hospital, Olmscheid was moved to North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale, where he would spend the next four days. There, he underwent arthroscopic surgery to scrape up his lung wall. Another tube was inserted to drain the blood that resulted from the arthroscopic surgery.
For Olmscheid, it was only the second time in his life he had ever been injured. As a senior at Buffalo High School, he broke his ankle and missed the first part of the season.

“My first thought was, ‘How do you get a collapsed lung at his age?’” Rich Glas, Concordia’s men’s basketball coach said. “In 40 years of coaching, I’ve never had a player go down to a collapsed lung.”

Olmscheid was released on Aug. 31 from North Memorial and returned home to Buffalo to recover. When he went to sleep that night, everything was thought to be over, and recovery was all that lay ahead.

It wasn’t.

He awoke the next morning throwing up and was taken back to the hospital where he found out he had appendicitis. He underwent surgery to remove his appendix, and was released the same day.

Olmscheid was eager to leave the hospital as soon as he could.

“You kind of get sick of the hospital after a while,” he said with a laugh.

Even scarier than the incident itself is the thought that it could happen again. The doctors told Olmscheid that there is a 50 percent chance his right lung could collapse.

“In perspective, I know there is much worse that could happen to me,” Olmscheid said. “But I’d rather not have that feeling again. I’ll just have to take it on one step at a time. It’s all part of God’s plan and I just have to dig deep and pass His test.”

Olmscheid’s said his girlfiend, Concordia graduate Amy Gabrielson, was the biggest help throughout the entire process, though he gave plenty of credit to his mom. Gabrielson stayed at the hospital with Olmscheid every night.

“When I finally got to the hospital, I had never seen him look so pale and gray,” Gabrielson said. “Seeing him like that was the biggest reason I didn’t want to go home to sleep.”

Two days later, Olmscheid was on campus for the start of classes and patiently awaited the day he could play basketball again.

He walked on a treadmill on Sept. 15, lifted weights on Sept. 28, and played pickup basketball for the first time since the incident on Sept. 30.

“[Olmscheid] was so happy playing pickup that Wednesday,” said Karl Olson, teammate of Olmscheid at Buffalo High School and current teammate at Concordia. “Seeing that was probably the best part of the year so far.”

The doctors told Olmscheid it could take up to seven months before his stamina returns to where it was before the injury. His endurance has dropped from being able to run about four to five miles to now only two. Throughout the entire process, he has lost around 15 pounds.

“I fear my cardio during the season won’t be where I want it to be,” Olmscheid said. “But I’m also worried about getting that weight back. Gaining weight is a tough thing to do.”

Olmscheid started all 25 games last season and led the team by averaging 13.3 points per game. He was also second on the team in minutes per game.

Through eight games this season, Olmscheid, now a senior, is averaging 13.4 points per game including 27 in a win against cross-town rival Minnesota State University Moorhead.

 “His presence makes our team better,” Glas said. “He has the ability to play on the perimeter or in the post. He needs to become a consistent force on the floor on every possession and do it on both ends of the floor.”

As Olmscheid looks back on his incident, he has words of wisdom for everyone that can inspire people both on and off the basketball court.

“Just appreciate the moments,” he said. “Stay humble. The minute you think you’re on top of the world, it can all come crashing down.”

For much of the season, Oregon and Auburn have been top of the BCS standings and for good reason; the Ducks have had one game in which their margin of victory was less than 11 points, and the Tigers remained unblemished in what is highly regarded as the top college football conference in the country, the SEC.

It’s tough to argue against that either of these teams has not earned the right to play in the National Championship game. The problem with the system sits with also undefeated Texas Christian University (TCU). TCU is a member of the Mountain West Conference, a conference that does not receive an automatic bid into one of five BCS games. The Horned Frogs lead the nation in scoring defense, allowing just over 11 points per game and are fourth in scoring offense at over 43 per game. The argument is not that TCU deserves to replace either Oregon or Auburn simply that the system the NCAA uses determines its National Champion does not grant a fair chance to everybody. Last season, TCU was matched up with Boise State in a BCS bowl game as both teams were undefeated. However, rather than granting both the opportunity to play a team from a major conference, the BCS avoided the potential embarrassment of both teams winning and proving the BCS is a crap system by matching them against each other.

Boise State went on to win that game but with both teams brining back multiple starters on both sides of the ball, it set up the potential for another BCS disaster. Thankfully, for the BCS, Boise State lost a few weeks ago to Nevada, avoiding the potential that, for a second straight season, four teams remained undefeated at season’s end. So why does such a terrible system exist? One word; money. Many of those against the current BCS system suggest a playoff, or some sort of plus one scenario, but the playoff would be far-less lucrative which is why the system remains the way it is. In fact, because changes do not appear in the making, the system has forced TCU to change conferences. That’s right, as dumb as it sounds, a team from Texas is joining a conference where a majority of its teams are based in the Northeastern United States. In fact, the system is not even perfect. Just recently, it was discovered that the BCS had made an error that allowed Boise State to move from 11 to 10 and dropped Louisiana State University from 10 to 11. The error did not change what bowl Boise State decided to play in, but simply added more fuel to the argument that the system does not work. Boise State President Bob Kustra sent an e-mail to fellow university presidents and conference commissioners stating;  

“How many times have we heard calls for transparency on our campuses and how many times have we shared our governance and communicated with our faculties and other constituencies in transparent fashion,” Kustra wrote. “Yet, in intercollegiate athletics, with the NCAA standing silently on the sidelines, we allow the BCS to work its magic with no idea of how accurate its rankings are on a week to week basis.”

He has a point. Nobody knows entirely how the system works, just that it’s what determines who plays in what bowl games. In fact, programs such as Boise State get no credit from major universities. Ohio State President Gordon Lee was even quoted as saying “We do not play the Little Sisters of the Poor.” A statement like this shows how the automatic-qualifying schools feel about schools that are not. Each team deserves a fair chance, and the system isn’t fair.

“I don’t mind somebody stating that they don’t think we ought to be in the national championship, but to do it with such erroneous information as Gordon Gee has used, gets under the skin of all of us who thought university presidents were supposed to be standing for fairness, equity and truth in how we portray our universities,” Kustra said.

True that Kustra. Drop the “C” and you’ll find exactly what the BCS is full of.