My FCS Top 25, 9/3/2013

My vote for the FCS Top 25 for the week ending 9/3/2013 follows below the flip.

1: North Dakota State Bison
2: Eastern Washington Eagles
3: Montana State Bobcats
4: Villanova Wildcats
5: Sam Houston State Bearkats
6: Towson Tigers
7: Northern Iowa Panthers
8: McNeese State Cowboys
9: Cal Poly Mustangs
10: Eastern Illinois Panthers
11: South Dakota State Jackrabbits
12: Central Arkansas Bears
13: Richmond Spiders
14: Wofford Terriers
15: Colgate Raiders
16: Coastal Carolina Chanticleers
17: New Hampshire Wildcats
18: Samford Bulldogs
19: Southern Utah Thunderbirds
20: Lehigh Mountain Hawks
21: Liberty Flames
22: Wagner Seahawks
23: Illinois State Redbirds
24: Bethune-Cookman Wildcats
25: Pennsylvania Quakers

Most significant win: It wasn't easy to pick this week, but I narrowly took Eastern Washington's last-second QB sneak to defeat an FBS team over North Dakota State's last-second QB sneak to defeat an FBS team. Why? Because Kansas State, despite their success last season, had plenty of questions going into this season, and North Dakota State has made a living taking the paydays of FBS guarantee games and then kicking the pants off their hosts.
Oregon State, despite being a victim of an FCS school in Sacramento State very recently, was built to be an outside Pac 12 title contender this season. They were ranked, and they still might be a Pac 12 title contender, which makes Eastern Washington's achievement more remarkable.
I thought long and hard about putting McNeese State higher than 8, but stopped there. Am I overreacting with one win over an excruciatingly bad FBS school? Maybe, but I really, really like this Cowboy team that looks to me like a squad with a whole lot of quality and few weaknesses. Everyone's focused on the final score of their stunning 31 point blowout of South Florida, but folks forget that they had to regroup after going down 7-0 early and getting shut out offensively in the first quarter.
Watching the McNeese State game twice, first live and then on an ESPN3 replay, it was a thing of beauty to see the Cowboys' confidence build as South Florida's confidence collectively imploded. When QB Matt Floyd tried to force a pass past CB Guy Morgan in the waning seconds of the first half, the pick six made it 29 unanswered points, to add to the first-quarter safety coming after a muffed punt snap by USF.
One more note on McNeese State/USF: it's worth checking the touchdown passes to TE Nic Jacobs. On the first, he was so wide open I could have brought it in for the touchdown.
Most Significant Loss: Wofford picked a rotten time to not only lose, but get drilled, by a Big XII team that could be competing for a big-time bowl, Baylor. The 69-3 evisceration was the most points the Bears had scored in a game since 1929 - and it was against a team that made a deep run in the FCS playoffs the previous season. Normal years there might not have been much of a drop, but in a season where eight FBS teams fell, they were the ones that dropped like a rock.
Forgotten Team: Liberty. With all the FBS upsets flying, and RB Dri Archer getting hurt, perhaps it shouldn't have been surprising that Kent State struggled with the Flames before putting them away late, 17-10. But Liberty did deliver a solid defensive effort and came a lot closer than people realize to an upset of an FBS team in their own right. They still have a ways to go offensively, but watch out for Liberty. I thought 21 was the right place to rank them.

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.

Lehigh Football Nation

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