Skip to main content

My FCS Top 25, 10/17/2011

Below the flip, see my Top 25 for this week.

1: Georgia Southern Eagles
2: Northern Iowa Panthers
3: North Dakota State Bison
4: Wofford Terriers
5: Montana State Bobcats
6: Lehigh Mountain Hawks
7: Maine Black Bears
8: Sam Houston State Bearkats
9: Appalachian State Mountaineers
10: Montana Grizzlies
11: New Hampshire Wildcats
12: James Madison Dukes
13: Harvard Crimson
14: Jacksonville State Gamecocks
15: Indiana State Sycamores
16: Norfolk State Spartans
17: Towson Tigers
18: Delaware Fightin' Blue Hens
19: Liberty Flames
20: Alabama State Hornets
21: Albany Great Danes
22: North Dakota Fighting Sioux
23: Brown Bears
24: Holy Cross Crusaders
25: Jacksonville Dolphins

Three quick hits about my Top 25:

* Man, picking 18-25 was a very tough exercise.

4-2 Delaware at No. 18 wasn't as difficult a pick - I rate them lower than most people, not giving the Hens too much of respect for three wins over Old Dominion, Delaware State and D-II West Chester - and it was easy to put 3-3 Liberty at No. 19, after their 63-27 payback shellacking of Coastal Carolina this weekend, considering their losses were to FBS North Carolina State and two Top 15 teams in James Madison and Lehigh.

But 20-25 were real struggles.  To me, 3-3 Richmond and 4-3 William & Mary were out - the Tribe only beat one team with a winning record, while Richmond is 0-3 in conference play.  5-2 Old Dominion weren't in my Top 25 last week, and their 39-35 loss to Towson wasn't going to be where I start putting the Monarchs in.  4-2 Samford got that way without beating a ranked team - and padding their schedule with 1-5 Gardner-Webb and D-II Stillman.

Overall, my feeling is that while the top teams in the power conferences certainly deserve recognition (Maine, Towson, James Madison, Wofford), the mid-range teams in these divisions have really failed to impress me very much.  I mean, is beating 1-6 Villanova all that impressive just because they share a conference with Maine?  Personally, I'd rate a win over Harvard a lot more than that.

* I settled on 6-1 Alabama State, 4-2 North Dakota, 4-2 Albany, 4-1 Brown, 3-3 Holy Cross, and 4-2 Jacksonville to fill out my Top 25.  I'm not thrilled with the picks, but I think in the end they're worthy picks.

Alabama State, the best team in the SWAC, has beaten every FCS team they've faced, and has only lost to an FBS opponent.  Albany's only losses have been to 3-3 Colgate in overtime, and No. 7 Maine - not a bad resume, along with four resounding wins.  Brown's only loss came to No. 13 Harvard, and they handled Rhode Island, Holy Cross, and Stony Book out-of-conference.

North Dakota felt like more of a reach to me - while they're 4-2, they have lost to two FBS teams and beaten two sub-Division-I teams.  So did Holy Cross to some extent - mostly fuelled by their win over No. 13 Harvard and their "close losses" to No. 11 New Hampshire and unranked UMass.  And Jacksonville, who has been impressive in wins over non-scholarship Pioneer Football League foes, also seemed like a bit of a reach with losses to 2-4 Western Illinois and 2-4 The Citadel.  But I felt a lot more comfortable giving them a spot in the Top 25 with full Division I schedules and a realistic chance to win their respective conferences.

* No. 8 Sam Houston State has done something impressive - they've gone 6-0, including a win over 3-3 New Mexico State out of the WAC.  For that, they're more than worthy of a Top Ten spot.

But do they deserve to be any higher?  They've only beaten one team with a winning record - 4-3 Central Arkansas - and the combined record of all their FCS opponents is 8-19, including two teams, Stephen F. Austin and Nicholls, who are looking for their second win on the season.

Some folks tend to overrate wins over FBS opponents, simply because they're FBS.  But while I give the Bearkats some credit for doing that, they'll have to really beat a big-time team before I start thinking of them as a Top 5 squad.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How The Ivy League Is Able To Break the NCAA's Scholarship Limits and Still Consider Themselves FCS

By now you've seen the results.  In 2018, the Ivy League has taken the FCS by storm. Perhaps it was Penn's 30-10 defeat of Lehigh a couple of weeks ago .  Or maybe it was Princeton's 50-9 drubbing of another team that made the FCS Playoffs last year, Monmouth.  Or maybe it was Yale's shockingly dominant 35-14 win over nationally-ranked Maine last weekend. The Ivy League has gone an astounding 12-4 so far in out-of-conference play, many of those wins coming against the Patriot League. But it's not just against the Patriot League where the Ivy League has excelled.  Every Ivy League school has at least one out-of-conference victory, which is remarkable since it is only three games into their football season.  The four losses - Rhode Island over Harvard, Holy Cross over Yale, Delaware over Cornell, and Cal Poly over Brown - were either close losses that could have gone either way or expected blowouts of teams picked to be at the bottom of the Ivy League. W

Made-Up Midseason Grades for Lehigh Football

 We are now officially midway through the 2023 Lehigh football season.  The Mountain Hawks sit at 1-5 overall, and 0-1 in the Patriot League. I thought I'd go ahead and make up some midseason grades, and set some "fan goals" for the second half. The 2023 Mountain Hawks were picked to finish fifth in the seven team Patriot League.  In order to meet or exceed that expectation, they'll probably have to go at least 3-2 the rest of the way in conference play.  Their remaining games are vs. Georgetown, at Bucknell, vs. Holy Cross, at Colgate, and vs. Lafayette in The Rivalry. Can they do it? Culture Changing: B+ .  I was there in the Bronx last week after the tough 38-35 defeat to Fordham, and there wasn't a single player emerging from the locker room that looked like they didn't care.  Every face was glum.  They didn't even seem sad.  More frustrated and angry. That may seem normal, considering the agonizing way the Mountain Hawks lost, but it was a marked chan

Fifteen Guys Who Might be Lehigh's Next Football Coach (and Five More)

If you've been following my Twitter account, you might have caught some "possibilities" as Lehigh's next head football coach like Lou Holtz, Brett Favre and Bo Pelini .  The chance that any of those three guys actually are offered and accept the Lehigh head coaching position are somewhere between zero and zero.  (The full list of my Twitter "possibilities" are all on this thread on the Lehigh Sports Forum .) However the actual Lehigh head football coaching search is well underway, with real names and real possibilities. I've come up with a list of fifteen possible names, some which I've heard whispered as candidates, others which might be good fits at Lehigh for a variety of reasons. UPDATE: I have found five more names of possible head coaches that I am adding to this list below. Who are the twenty people?  Here they are, in alphabetical order.