My FCS Top 25, 10/29/2012

Did I forget to post my vote for the FCS Top 25 for the week ending 10/27/2012? I guess I did. My vote follows below the flip, with a shorter-than-usual explanation of things.

1: Georgia Southern Eagles
2: Montana State Bobcats
3: North Dakota State Bison
4: Stony Brook Seawolves
5: Wofford Terriers
6: Eastern Washington Eagles
7: Lehigh Mountain Hawks
8: James Madison Dukes
9: Cal Poly Mustangs
10: Sam Houston State Bearkats
11: New Hampshire Wildcats
12: Old Dominion Monarchs
13: Indiana State Sycamores
14: Northern Arizona Lumberjacks
15: Central Arkansas Bears
16: Appalachian State Mountaineers
17: Albany Great Danes
18: South Dakota State Jackrabbits
19: Illinois State Redbirds
20: Tennessee State Tigers
21: Sacramento State Hornets
22: Richmond Spiders
23: Bethune-Cookman Wildcats
24: Villanova Wildcats
25: Colgate Raiders

Most significant win: For me, it was Sacramento State's win over previously undefeated Cal Poly, 35-29, which was a must-win for the Hornets to keep any semblance of postseason hopes alive. Not only was it an impressive win for Sacramento State, with an epic performance from QB Garrett Safron, it was a turning of the corner of late-season swoons that seems to always plague the Hornets.
Most Significant Loss: Youngstown State effectively played themselves out of the playoffs by losing to South Dakota State 41-28 in their fourth consecutive loss in Missouri Valley play. Normally, a win over an FBS school like Pitt would make the Penguins a shoo-in for the playoffs. This year? Not so much, with Indiana State looming on the schedule and even a game against South Dakota this weekend not exactly a guaranteed win.
Forgotten Team: Colgate. The Raiders not only have one of the Top 10 offenses in the nation, thanks to QB Gavin McCarney, few people realize they are two wins away from the the Patriot League title should they dispatch of Lafayette at home and Lehigh the following weekend. They started slow - Dick Biddle's team generally does - but they are firing on all cylinders and are very deserving of a Top 25 nod this weekend.
Finally, you might have missed it before Sandy hit the Valley, but Lehigh's kept its No.1 spot in the Lambert Poll this week. Here are this week's results:

Division I - Championship Subdivision Record
1. Lehigh 8-0
2. Old Dominion 7-1
3. (tie) Stony Brook 8-1
3. (tie) New Hampshire 7-2
5. James Madison 6-2
6. Albany 6-1
7. Richmond 6-3
8. Harvard 6-1
9. Towson 4-4
10. Villanova 6-3

Also Receiving Votes: Colgate, Delaware

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...

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