LFN's FCS Top 25, 10/3/2017

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 this wasn't a week where a lot of teams dropped out, but it was a week where there were a bunch of epic Top 25 clashes that caused some reshuffling in the ranks.

For example, Youngstown State humbled South Dakota State 19-7 at home in a defensive feast, Central Arkansas overcame Sam Houston State 41-30 in a shootout, and South Dakota continued their dominant early-season performance by jumping to a 38-6 lead and then holding off a furious Leatherneck rally to survive in a 38-33 win over Western Illinois.

If you are looking for a nice, concise recap of the top games last week all in one, convenient post - you can look at CSJ's FCS Week 5 Twitter Highlights and get the information. Highlights from Columbia's stunning win over Princeton are there - the Lions, for the first time since 1996, are 3-0. And in further signs of the coming Apocalypse, Austin Peay, which recently broke a 27 game losing streak, have just ripped off three straight wins.

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

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

Biggest Omission: Again, it's difficult to find teams in FCS that are on the brink of my Top 25 that aren't in there. Probably the closest thing to that is Northern Iowa, who survived "Missouri Valley Football Conference Roulette" this week with a 24-17 win over Southern Illinois, the "easy" part of their conference schedule with five straight games over nationally-ranked teams coming up.

Biggest Up-And-Comer: Elon. Let's face it - even the biggest Phoenix fans didn't dream of having a 4-1 record at this point of the year - but here we are, where the Phoenix boast wins over three straight teams that were in the Top 25 when they played them, Charleston Southern, Richmond, and Albany. Could - dare I say it - Elon's home game against James Madison on November 18th determine the CAA's championship and autobid?

Biggest Win: I was tempted to mention South Dakota in this space, due to their surprising record in the Missouri Valley, but Youngstown State definitively proved to me that they are a unquestioned Top 5 team after their dominating win over South Dakota State. The Penguins were good, but I see now they're in the conversation for "elite".

Biggest Loss: UT Martin, whaaat? Not to take anything away from Austin Peay's three-game winning streak, but.. to be shut out by the Governors? Right after getting back to Top 25 prominence? No matter how you spin it, it's a crushing blow to their title hopes and FCS playoff hopes.

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

Lehigh Football Nation

Search This Blog