LFN's FCS Top 25, 9/26/2017

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, well, was I completely wrong about Villanova and Richmond, who were two of my Top 10 teams that got upset this week?

CAA fans will say that conference games in their conference are hard, but... Albany and Elon aren't known as being the giant-killers in the conference, let's just say. It's great to see Albany do well, who were awful close to an FCS playoff team last season, and Elon as well, former home of former Lehigh head coach Pete Lembo as well as the new home of former Lehigh offensive coordinator Drew Folmar. But are they Top 25 teams?

If you are looking for a nice, concise recap of the top games last week with Twitter video highlights - all in one, convenient post - you can look at CSJ's FCS Week 4 Recap and get the information. Of the one there, I always like the postgame win celebrations, and UT Martin's win over Tennessee State was a pretty good one (and it helps that I picked them to upset the Tigers, too.)

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. Sam Houston State
6. Youngstown State
7. Eastern Washington
8. Western Illinois
9. Wofford
10. Central Arkansas
11. The Citadel
12. South Dakota
13. Villanova
14. Richmond
15. North Carolina A&T
16. New Hampshire
17. Stony Brook
18. Weber State
19. Illinois State
20. Albany
21. UT Martin
22. Monmouth
23. Elon
24. Western Carolina
25. Dartmouth

Biggest Omission: As we start to see more teams with losses, it's harder to find deserving teams that aren't in my Top 25. I guess McNeese State might qualify as the omission, as they're present in the FCS Coaches' Top 25 this week and they sport a 3-1 record, though it's hard to see how they seem like an omission because they're the third-best team in the Southland conference. They've played a pretty light schedule, and lost their season opener to Nicholls, who in turn got ground into dust by Sam Houston State this weekend. The Southland is a top-heavy, terrible-bottom league, and that will play itself out over the course of the season.

Biggest Up-And-Comer: Dartmouth. I was impressed from what I was able to catch of the Big Green's home opener. Their amazing game against Holy Cross is one of the most amazing I-can't-believe-it wins of this young season, and the Crusaders are no slouches, having demolished New Hampshire the prior week and putting the fear of God in UConn.

Biggest Win: I was on Western Illinois early in this season, and they repaid my faith with a complete beatdown of new FBS school Coastal Carolina, 52-10. Something to remember about this win that makes it even more remarkable: It was the third straight road victory for the Leathernecks, having gone to Tennessee Tech and Northern Arizona. It is super-hard to beat three different teams in three different time zones on the road, but that's what Western Illinois did.

Biggest Loss: There are a lot of candidates, but Tennessee State's rivalry loss to UT Martin was a big one, taking some of the wind out of their sails after a 3-0 start and an FBS victory over Georgia State. It dropped them all the way out of my Top 25, but they're definitely on the fringe and could find themselves back in with a win next week.

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. W

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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