Lehigh Football Nation

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 .

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 let's just get all the drama out of the way now - James Madison is my clear-cut No. 1. I know, right?   Shocking. This week saw two Top 10 teams of mine last week go down - and Virginia, the games weren't close.  One might not have been too much of a surprise, as it came against a nationally-ranked team at their place.  But the other stunned a lot of people, including myself, and frankly, I hate missing the call of a Patriot League team upsetting a CAA team.

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.

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 week, unsurprisingly, I think James Madison was, and still is, the No. 1 team in the nation. Not exactly going out on a limb, am I? If you try to pick FCS games, one of the easiest picks of last week was to take the Dukes to upset the Pirates.  Pretty much all the experts across the board thought that James Madison, even with some suspended players, was stacked enough to take over rebuilding East Carolina, and boy, did they ever. Remember the days when FCS vs. FBS matchups were defined by the FCS teams "wilting" in the fourth quarter?  With upper-echelon FCS teams like James Madison, that myth has been debunked for a while, but it was brutally apparent in this game, when RB Cardon Johnson  easily eluded East Carolina tacklers on two 80+ yard touchdown runs. That didn't surprise me at all this weekend.  And they're still my No. 1 te...

For us Patriot League diehards, we know what the FCS playoffs are all about.  We know who's in line for the autobid, we know who the No. 1 teams are, and we have a pretty good idea about who can get in, and why. But you, dear Reader, might not be as dialed into the FCS playoff scene as the rest of us.  You know that Lehigh will be practicing on Thanksgiving, and will be playing a football game after the 152nd meeting on the gridiron between Lehigh and Lafayette. In the span of one blog post, let me tell you, new or old Lehigh fan, what you need to look for in regards to the FCS playoffs.

You didn't ask for them, but here's my pick for this week's FCS Top 25. "Back to Normal" seems to be the theme of this week's Top 25, with my top 9 unchanged from last week. The biggest team to fall in my poll was definitely Montana , whose 45-34 defeat to Northern Arizona was even more resounding than the final score might indicate.  The Lumberjacks in this one held a 45-20 advantage before letting up two touchdowns at the end of the game. The Griz have frankly underwhelmed all year to me, allowing a team like St. Francis (PA) to hang around for no good reason, running up the score against hapless competition like Mississippi Valley State and Sacramento State.  With their second loss to a Big Sky opponent and nothing all that impressive in their schedule, it was an easy call to drop them more than 10 points in my poll.

You didn't ask for them, but here's my pick for this week's FCS Top 25. So this is the week that North Dakota State falls. They fell in a thrilling defensive battle at home to South Dakota State in the game for the "Dakota Marker". It was a great game, filled with drama and showed that the Jackrabbits are worthy of everyone's attention this week. In fact, South Dakota State's effective, time-consuming drive was in many ways pulling from North Dakota State's own trademark last-second comebacks, pulling together a drive for the ages, daring them to stop them yet consistently converting 3rd and 4th downs to set up the chance to win. But then, therein lies the tricky part.  Where to rank the Bison, and where to rank the Jackrabbits?

(Photo Credit: Chris Barry/ The Brown and White File Photo) In terms of national recognition, life in the Patriot League isn't always easy. Certainly Patriot League players and fans read the preseason magazines about FCS.  And last I checked, the youth of America still watch ESPN, and they see some FCS darlings in the FCS Kickoff Classic, like North Dakota State. They tune into the college football landscape, and they see Eastern Washington upsetting Washington State, Bo Pelini coaching Youngstown State, Albany upsetting Buffalo. Yes, the national FCS scene has their darlings, and frequently it feels like the Patriot League and their opponents are mere afterthoughts in the world where Big Sky teams are putting up big scores, Sam Houston State is beating all comers, The Citadel is dominating in the South, and the Missouri Valley Football Conference sees almost half its members in the Top 25. And despite having junior WR Troy Pelletier and junior WR Gatlin Casey sittin...

You didn't ask for them, but here's my pick for this week's FCS Top 25. I love picking games correctly involving teams 1-13 because it makes picking the Top 25 very easy - simply cut, and paste. Most of that comes from not overrating teams like Northern Iowa , who dropped out of my top 25 after a bad loss to South Dakota , and properly rating Villanova , who keeps winning and has been a regular in my Top 10 for several weeks now. One of the teams I had been considering for the Top 25 is Dartmouth , but after a stunning 21-13 loss to Yale , I've had to re-evaluate that assessment. Many a transitive property that puts Lehigh in the playoffs or maybe even the FBS National Championship game could start with "Lehigh beat Yale, and Yale beat Dartmouth, and Dartmouth beat New Hampshire..."

You didn't ask for them, but here's my pick for this week's FCS Top 25. (Photo Credit: Elon Athletics) Let's see, are there any other teams I can curse into losses this week? Last time I was here, I was extolling the virtues of William and Mary and Stony Brook in this space.  This week?  Um, not so much.

You didn't ask for them, but here's my pick for this week's FCS Top 25. Photo Credit: New York Newsday Stony Brook WR Ray Bolden catches a pass a sideline pass and takes it in for a touchdown against Richmond on Sept. 17, 2016. Photo Credit: Daniel De Mato

You didn't ask for them, but here's my pick for this week's FCS Top 25. Photo Credit: Chicago Tribune Illinois State kicker Sean Slattery, right, celebrates with quarterback Koty Thelen after scoring the game-winning field goal as Northwestern running back Justin Jackson, left, reacts.  (Nam Y. Yuh/AP)

You didn't ask for them - nobody is - but here's my pick for this week's FCS Top 25.

For the last few years, "the commitee" and I have compiled the Patsy Ratings, an attempt to evaluate the incoming football classes of the Patriot League. It's clearly "for entertainment purposes only," an effort to try to take a look at whether a schools' recruiting needs are met, whether they've secured the playing services of a lot of recognized talent, and whether some of their measurables look good. However, I frequently find myself wanting the Patsy Ratings to do more.  For example, how did the Patriot League as a whole do in comparison to other FCS schools?  Did the Mountain Hawks crush their FCS competition?  Or was the actual picture different? Without, say, an equivalent James Madison Football Nation willing to make these Patsy-like evaluations of the incoming classes of other FCS schools, there was no real good way to make that type of comparison. However, my curiosity got the better of me.   "There must be a way," ...

If you'd like, you can check out my FCS Top 25 vote below. Pity Dartmouth . The Big Green and Harvard , whom I've had in my Top 25 all season, played a game last Friday that was as great as a game between Top 25 teams can be. For 3 1/2 quarters, Dartmouth controlled the game, up 13-0 and the Big Green's defense, somewhat surprisingly, completely smothering Harvard's potent offense. Then, in the span of about six and a half, Harvard, amazingly, pulled out the win. One touchdown pass to WR Seitu Smith , one Dartmouth fumble and another touchdown throw from QB Scott Hosch to RB Justice Shelton-Mosley , and Harvard took their first lead of the game with 36 seconds left in the game. It was a great game to watch, and amply showed that both teams were worthy of Top 25 status, but it is impossible, as a neutral fan, to not feel for the Big Green, who had them right there .

If you'd like, you can check out my FCS Top 25 vote below. The story of the week in James Madison after their loss to Richmond wasn't the fact that College Football Gameday was there, nor was it about their big CAA conference loss, which took them out of the drivers' seat for the CAA title and conference autobid. It was the fact that their superstar quarterback, QB Vad Lee , sustained an injury that would require surgery and take him out for the remained of the season. The play didn't look like much.  The Dukes, who were already down by two touchdowns, saw Lee simply try to make something happen on a routine 2 yard run left.  A shoestring tackle by Richmond's linebacker wasn't particularly dirty, though in retrospect it looked like his foot was tackled awkwardly. A play afterwards, Lee remained in, and collapsed after hucking a deep pass, and his incredible career at JMU was done.

If you'd like, you can check out my FCS Top 25 vote below. Last week, I said people around the country are starting to understand that James Madison is a pretty damn good FCS football team. Apparently, someone at College Football Gameday was also paying attention to the Dukes as well. At 7-0, James Madison University was chosen as the site for ESPN's pregame show College Football Gameday, to highlight their game versus another Top 25 school, Richmond. It's not the first time College Football Gameday has elected to cover an FCS school.  The nationwide program has already made a couple stops in Fargo, North Dakota to cover the North Dakota State Bison, and last year the hot rumor was that Gameday was going to cover Lehigh vs. Lafayette 's 150th celebration at Yankee Stadium, but ultimately decided to go with Harvard vs. Yale , as "The Game" was for an Ivy League championship and "The Rivalry" ended up being for pride. Harrisonburg...

If you'd like, you can check out my FCS Top 25 vote below. I don't ordinarily do do two things with my poll that I actually did this week: 1. I usually don't demote a team completely out of the Top 25 if they're a Top 5 team and they lose. 2. I usually don't demote a team from the No. 1 slot if they win their game. But that's exactly what I did, after I looked at my poll with a fresh new set of eyes after some of the more interesting outcomes from the weekend. I'd been meaning to demote Villanova for some time, not only due to their sort-of lackluster performance over the beginning of the season, but for their seemingly lackluster play going back to last season when Sam Houston upset them in the FCS Round of 8 last season.  I was looking for a dominant performance against the worst team on their schedule, Penn, and instead the Quakers upset the Wildcats 24-13 . You could argue that they were getting things done with defense.  You could have sa...

One of the best pieces of data reporting, in regards to NCAA athletics, comes from USA Today Sports and a group of lawyers and reporters. It's called the NCAA Athletics Spending database, which details the amount of revenue and spending that every public school makes on athletics.  (By law, every public or partial-public school needs to disclose this information.) It also computes the amount that each school receives in "subsidy" , which is a combination of institutional support (a direct payment from the school to the athletic department), student fees (fees included in tuition that end up going to the athletic department), and taxpayer money. The full database is here , which is interesting in and of itself, but I wanted to break out the database to only include those schools with FCS football programs.  That's what I've done below.

I really thought I'd have been over it by now, but I'm not. Last year's Lehigh football team, who went 10-1, was denied an at-large spot to the FCS playoffs, becoming the first school with 10 Division I wins to be denied the honor since the playoff field expanded from 16 teams. How did this happen? The most common complaint from some Lehigh fans and many other FCS fans was that Lehigh's "schedule strength" in 2012 simply was not cutting it when comparing them to other at-large candidates like New Hampshire, Wofford, or Illinois State. Is it true that Lehigh scheduled themselves out of a playoff game last season - and will this season's Lehigh schedule make it any easier to qualify as an at-large team should the Mountain Hawks be in that position again?