Skip to main content

Bye Week; Predictions Of Other Games

This is the bye week, as you've problably noticed by the lack of a preview, press roundup, and postings the past couple days. For those that care, here are my picks this week for the games that are going on today.

Patriot League:
Colgate at Dartmouth. Dartmouth will be better, but Colgate I'm sure will be eager to prove that their win against UMass was no fluke. Colgate 21, Dartmouth 10.

Princeton at #21 Lafayette. I'll be attending this game as part of my duties as I-AA.org diarist. This looks to be a defensive struggle. It seems unlikely that Princeton will sneak up on the Leopards this year, and they are eager to go 3-0. Look for a lot of defense, and a Leopard win. Lafayette 17, Princeton 6.

Bucknell at Cornell. The Bison can't seem to get anything right lately (despite a lot of injuries), but it's hard to picture them righting the ship at Cornell. Cornell 31, Bucknell 13.

Brown at Georgetown. Georgetown's home opener in their new refurbished stadium will be a great day for Hoya football, and the Hoyas will be game to play the Bears. I think the Bears pull it out, however, as they shake off the rust and win in the 4th. Brown 31, G'Town 14.

#16 Harvard at Holy Cross. An upset here? No way. The Crusaders will find out the hard way that the Crimson ain't Sacred Heart. Harvard 42, HC 14.

Columbia at Fordham. This "Liberty Cup" battle is always close, and I think Fordham pulls out a win they need to have. Fordham 31, Columbia 28.

Other I-AA Top 25:
Western Oregon (D-II) at #2 Eastern Washington. Smackdown. EWU 63, WO 0.

#3 Southern Illinois at Western Michigan (I-A). Southern Illinois will be game, but Western Michigan will pull it out at the end in the Saluki's fist good test of the season. WMU 24, SIU 21.

West Chester (D-II) at #4 Delaware. Smackdown #2. Delaware 77, WC 0.

#5 Northern Iowa at Iowa (I-A). As much as I'd like to make Panther Nation happy, with Iowa's embarassment to State last week, this should get ugly fast. Iowa 56, NIU 3.

South Dakota State at Montana. Montana at home. Period. Montana 41, SDSU 15.

#7 New Hampshire at Towson. The Wildcats will crush any faint hope the Tigers have this season of challenging for the title.. UNH 35, Towson 3.

Delaware St. at #8 James Madison. Just what the Dukes ordered. JMU 63, DSU 10.

#9 William & Mary at Rhode Island. This game will be closer than people may think, but it's hard to see a loss here. W&M 27, URI 17.

Weber St. at #10 North Dakota St. The Bison will continue to dominate. NDSU 48, Weber St. 12.

Samford at #11 Furman. Furman stuggling for the third straight week? Hard to picture it. Furman 31, Samford 16.

#12 Montana St. at #19 Cal Poly. The game of the week. Montana St. looks to me a monster out of the Big Sky, and I think they take this one. MSU 35, Cal Poly 28.

#13 Northwestern St. at Louisiana-Lafayette (I-A). The brutal road strech of the Demons continues. I can't see the upset after 3 bruising weeks. LL 35, NW St. 13.

#14 Georgia Southern at Wofford. The Eagles in a must-win? Sure looks like it. Despite their problems, I think the Eagles end up on the winning side. GSU 24, Wofford 17.

#17 Sam Houston St. at Texas Tech (I-A). Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. TT 55, SHSU 10.

#20 Coastal Carolina at Appalachian St. If the Chants win this, I'm a believer. But it's awful hard to win in Boone. I'm thinking, letdown game. App St. 35, Coastal 24.

#22 McNeese St. at Southern Mississippi (I-A). This will be closer than you think, but Southern Miss should prevail in the end. SM 30, McNeese 21.

#23 South Carolina St. at Bethune-Cookman. This is where I smell the upset this week. B-CC 25, SCSU 22.

Stony Brook at #24 Hofstra. Hofstra handles another cupcake. Hofstra 55, SB 3.

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....

UMass 21, Lafayette 14, halftime

Are you watching this game? UMass had this game under control until about 3 minutes in the second quarter, and then got an interception, converted for a TD. Then the Leopards forced a fumble off the return, and then converted THAT for a TD, making this a game. It's on CN8. You really should be watching this.

Examining A Figure Skating Rivalry: Tonya and Nancy

It must be very hard for a millennial to understand the fuss around the Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding figure skating scandal in the run-up to the 1994 Olympics. If you're of a certain age, though - whether you're a figure skating fan or not, and I am decidedly no fan of figure skating - the Shakespearean story of Harding and Kerrigan still engages, and still grabs peoples' attention, twenty years later. Why, though?  Why, twenty years later, in a sport I care little, does the story still grab me?  Why did I spend time out of my life watching dueling NBC and ESPN documentaries on the subject, and Google multiple stories about Jeff Gilooly , idiot "bodyguards", and the whole sordid affair? I think it's because the story, even twenty years later, is like opium. The addictive story, even now, has everything.  Everything.  The woman that fought for everything, perhaps crossing over to the dark side to get her chance at Olypic Gold, vs. the woman who...