My FCS Top 25 Vote, Week 1, 2015

One last bit of house-cleaning to finish up before tackling the James Madison preview in earnest: below the flip, check out my FCS Top 25 vote below.

It could have been one of the hardest Top 25 votes I've ever done. For example, which FCS team that upset an FBS team was I going to leave off? Montana went 1-1 in their two games - where should they be ranked? Finally - how much was I going to punish some teams (I'm looking at you, Villanova) for losing to FBS squads?

1: Coastal Carolina Chanticleers
2: Jacksonville State Gamecocks
3: Villanova Wildcats
4: Illinois State Redbirds
5: Sam Houston State Bearkats
6: Montana Grizzlies
7: Eastern Washington Eagles
8: New Hampshire Wildcats
9: North Dakota State Bison
10: Fordham Rams
11: Northern Iowa Panthers
12: Liberty Flames
13: William & Mary Tribe
14: Southeastern Louisiana Lions
15: James Madison Dukes
16: Montana State Bobcats
17: Indiana State Sycamores
18: Samford Bulldogs
19: Chattanooga Mocs
20: Harvard Crimson
21: Southern Illinois Salukis
22: South Dakota State Jackrabbits
23: Portland State Vikings
24: Cal Poly Mustangs
25: Dartmouth Big Green

Ninth? Yes, Virginia; I put the defending champs the North Dakota State Bison 9th, behind teams like Villanova, Sam Houston, and New Hampshire. Is it too low? Yes; I acknowledge it is. However, I think they were seriously harmed by my general policy to not downgrade a team for losing to an FBS team, which is why Villanova, Illinois State, Sam Houston State, and Eastern Washington all stayed pretty much the same from last week.
Coastal 1, Jacksonville State 2? Yup. My preseason poll had Coastal Carolina at 2 behind North Dakota state, and they won a pretty big game on the road this weekend vs. Furman as well, making them the logical choice, barely squeaking it out over Jacksonville State. (Incidentally, not a great weekend for the SoCon - the Gamecocks also beat last year's champions, Chattanooga, 23-20. My sleeper pick as SoCon champs, Samford, saved the conference with a resounding 45-16 win over Central Arkansas.)
Logjam on the bottom? Yes, My bottom 5 saw me have to take out my sleeper NEC (Bryant) and MEAC (North Carolina A&T) picks in order to find room for Portland State (who came out of nowhere to upset Washington State 23-17) and Cal Poly (who beat Montana in a non-conference matchup on the final play of the game). While I didn't feel comfortable putting Poly in the Top 10, I felt like they needed to be in the conversation, along with Portland State, so I stuck them in the Top 25. Is it fair, because Poly beat Montana? No; but Poly has a chance to build on their success and rise up the ranks quickly if they do the expected and win a bunch of games. Same with Portland State, for that matter.
No North Dakota? If there were a No. 26, North Dakota would be that team due to their shutout win vs. FBS Wyoming (ironically coached by North Dakota State's former head guy, Craig Bohl), but for now they are just outside the Top 25 because, frankly, I think Dartmouth is a better team. There will be a very good chance for the Fightin' Nothings to get into the Top 25, but some other teams will have to lose first.

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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