LFN's FCS Top 25, 9/12/2017

I don't officially vote in any of the FCS Top 25 polls, but I do share who I think deserves to be in the Top 25, and for the second straight week - hold on to your hats - I think James Madison was, and still is, the No. 1 team in the nation.

I know, right? Crazy.

Truth be known, the top layer of FCS teams did little to move themselves much. When teams like New Hampshire were beating FBS teams and teams like Villanova were taking FCS teams to the wire, much of the Top 10 proved they were Top 10 worthy teams.

If you are looking for a nice, concise recap of the top games last week with video highlights - all in one, convenient post - you can look at CSJ's FCS Week 2 Recap and get the information. There's some great stuff in there - LFN's favorite is South Dakota State's fake FG attempt to score a touchdown. It's one you'll want to see over and over.

Here's what I ended up with in my Top 25:

1. James Madison
2. North Dakota State
3. South Dakota State
4. Jacksonville State
5. New Hampshire
6. Villanova
7. Sam Houston State
8. Wofford
9. North Dakota
10. Richmond
11. Chattanooga
12. Eastern Washington
13. Youngstown State
14. Charleston Southern
15. The Citadel
16. Western Illinois
17. Northern Iowa
18. Tennessee State
19. Central Arkansas
20. Stony Brook
21. Weber State
22. Howard
23. North Carolina A&T
24. Harvard
25. Colgate

Biggest Omission: South Dakota. Same as last week, this has a lot to do with my policy to not have more than 5 teams in any one conference in my Top 25 unless it is unavoidable. This is because I feel strongly if you finish 6th in your conference you are not a Top 25 team, and Western Illinois, who in this early season was amply proven to be Top 25 material, clearly belongs to me. Though they did upset Bowling Green 35-27 - and the Falcons were picked to be a middle-of-the-pack team in the MAC this year - I think they need one more win before I put them in.

Biggest Up-And-Comer: Harvard. I know they haven't contested a game yet, but I struggled to find any other team to make my Top 25. Montana hasn't shown me much. Samford almost blew it against West Georgia. Nichols had an eye-opener against Texas A&M, and beat McNeese, but what does that mean? The Crimson are picked to win the Ivy League, and at least early on they seem like a tough team on paper. I think they should be in there.

Biggest Win: North Dakota State didn't just beat Eastern Washington - they dominated them 40-13 and grounded one of the most potent passing offenses on the road, far from the safe confines of the Fargodome. Bison lover or Bison hater - you have to respect how utterly difficult that is and especially in that resounding way.

Biggest Loss: Sad for me to say, but it'e unquestionably Lehigh, who was only team in my Top 25 to lose to a non-ranked FCS team - every other team lost to either an FBS team or to a Top 10 FCS team. It's possible that a series of events could put the Mountain Hawks back in the Top 25 later in the season, but for the short term, losing to Monmouth was an absolute killer in terms of national ranking.

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...

Lehigh Football Nation

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