Skip to main content

My FCS Top 25, 9/26/2011

Below the flip, see my Top 25 for this week.  (more)
1: Georgia Southern Eagles
2: Northern Iowa Panthers
3: North Dakota State Bison
4: New Hampshire Wildcats
5: Wofford Terriers
6: Appalachian State Mountaineers
7: Richmond Spiders
8: Montana State Bobcats
9: James Madison Dukes
10: Lehigh Mountain Hawks
11: South Carolina State Bulldogs
12: Delaware Fightin' Blue Hens
13: Southern Illinois Salukis
14: Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks
15: Chattanooga Mocs
16: Southern Utah Thunderbirds
17: Yale Bulldogs
18: William & Mary Tribe
19: South Dakota Coyotes
20: Sam Houston State Bearkats
21: Holy Cross Crusaders
22: McNeese State Cowboys
23: Indiana State Sycamores
24: Monmouth Hawks
25: Harvard Crimson

Three quick hits about my Top 25 this week:

1. William & Mary's free fall through the Top 25 continues.  After being rated as a Top 5 team by many in the preseason, the Tribe's free-fall to a 2-2 record - including a squeaker against D-II New Haven at home - has them still ranked in my Top 25, but just.  You openly wonder if they might even drop further unless they right the ship in a big way against another CAA team, 1-3 Villanova, who also fell out of the Top 25 earlier in the year.  Even a narrow win might not be enough to stem their slide.

2. It was a huge week for FCS upsets over FBS teams last week, and it showed with two newcomers to my Top 25.  Southern Utah's delicious 41-16 upset over UNLV put them at No. 16 in my poll, after their delicious upset of former Griz head coach Bobby Hauck.  And Sam Houston State (No. 20)'s 48-45 overtime upset over New Mexico caused not only the Lobos to be embarrassed - it was the last straw in  the Mike Locksley coaching era.  Humiliating FBS teams are a great way to get into anyone's Top 25.

3. Monmouth - yes, that Monmouth, that faced off against Lehigh on opening weekend - is quietly 2-1, with wins against Villanova of the CAA and NEC title contender Central Connecticut State.  With only 1-3 Colgate left on the non-conference schedule, their toughest NEC opponent out of the way, and an extremely favorable home NEC schedule, it's not hard to see the Hawks soaring into a lot of Top 25's in the weeks to come - and, very realistically, a NEC championship.

Comments

Post a Comment

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....
40 comments
Read more

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.
20 comments
Read more

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...
1 comment
Read more