Archive For The “Harvard” Category
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.
Why the Ivy League, and why now? How has the Ivy League turned things around, completely, as a league?
The answer appears to lie with three converging trends that every Ivy is starting to exploit to their advantage – increasing the overall number of athletic admits, using their so-called non-scholarship status to make a mockery of the scholarship limits of FCS football, and allowing essentially an unlimited roster size for home games.
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.
Why the Ivy League, and why now? How has the Ivy League turned things around, completely, as a league?
The answer appears to lie with three converging trends that every Ivy is starting to exploit to their advantage – increasing the overall number of athletic admits, using their so-called non-scholarship status to make a mockery of the scholarship limits of FCS football, and allowing essentially an unlimited roster size for home games.
This week, Lafayette plays Harvard up in Cambridge, where the 2-4 Leopards are expected to lose to the 2-2 Crimson. I say expected to lose because with one exception since 2000, that’s what’s happened every time Lafayette has played Harvard: they have lost 12 out of their last 13 to the Johnnies, and have a lifetime record of 3-19 against them.
The expectation among Patriot League football fans is that football scholarships was supposed to change all of that. Simply offer conventional football scholarships, add to that a chance to play in the FCS Playoffs, and suddenly football recruits choosing between Harvard and Lehigh for business would start choosing Lehigh.
It hasn’t worked out quite that way.
Through five games in 2017, the combined record of the Patriot League is a mind-boggling 8-21 outside of Patriot League contests. And of those eight wins, only one has come against a team from the Ivy League – Colgate’s 21-7 win over Cornell. Collectively, the Patriot League is 1-7 against the Ancient Eight, with six of those seven losses coming by more than two touchdowns.
This is not what fans of the Patriot League signed up for five years ago when they decided to offer the same sort of scholarships that schools like Delaware, Montana and North Dakota State. But is the problem scholarships, or is it something else?
This week, Lafayette plays Harvard up in Cambridge, where the 2-4 Leopards are expected to lose to the 2-2 Crimson. I say expected to lose because with one exception since 2000, that’s what’s happened every time Lafayette has played Harvard: they have lost 12 out of their last 13 to the Johnnies, and have a lifetime record of 3-19 against them.
The expectation among Patriot League football fans is that football scholarships was supposed to change all of that. Simply offer conventional football scholarships, add to that a chance to play in the FCS Playoffs, and suddenly football recruits choosing between Harvard and Lehigh for business would start choosing Lehigh.
It hasn’t worked out quite that way.
Through five games in 2017, the combined record of the Patriot League is a mind-boggling 8-21 outside of Patriot League contests. And of those eight wins, only one has come against a team from the Ivy League – Colgate’s 21-7 win over Cornell. Collectively, the Patriot League is 1-7 against the Ancient Eight, with six of those seven losses coming by more than two touchdowns.
This is not what fans of the Patriot League signed up for five years ago when they decided to offer the same sort of scholarships that schools like Delaware, Montana and North Dakota State. But is the problem scholarships, or is it something else?
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.
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No college football coach wants to face a team boxed in a corner.
In that way, Harvard was stepping into a purple hornet’s nest last weekend when the nationally-ranked Crimson came to play the wounded Crusaders.
After their injury-riddled team failed to hold onto a win against Bucknell, ultimately falling 21-20, Tom Gilmore‘s team needed to make a stand against a really good football team in order to keep their season from a limp to the finish.
Even if they didn’t win, they had to keep things close – few pundits gave Holy Cross much of a chance against the better bankrolled, historically dominant Harvard team that hadn’t lost a road game a non-conference game in their last sixteen tries.
Cornered like rats, Holy Cross responded in a big way. Six sacks and a second-half shutout later, the Crusaders would notch their first win over a nationally-ranked opponent since 2009, thus turning things around at the exact right time for them and the exact wrong time for Lehigh.
Read more »
No college football coach wants to face a team boxed in a corner.
In that way, Harvard was stepping into a purple hornet’s nest last weekend when the nationally-ranked Crimson came to play the wounded Crusaders.
After their injury-riddled team failed to hold onto a win against Bucknell, ultimately falling 21-20, Tom Gilmore‘s team needed to make a stand against a really good football team in order to keep their season from a limp to the finish.
Even if they didn’t win, they had to keep things close – few pundits gave Holy Cross much of a chance against the better bankrolled, historically dominant Harvard team that hadn’t lost a road game a non-conference game in their last sixteen tries.
Cornered like rats, Holy Cross responded in a big way. Six sacks and a second-half shutout later, the Crusaders would notch their first win over a nationally-ranked opponent since 2009, thus turning things around at the exact right time for them and the exact wrong time for Lehigh.
Read more »
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, Virginia I’m sure will be a great host for Gameday. It’s also worth mentioning Dukes fans, and possibly their athletics reps, will be doing a great job showcasing Bridgeforth Stadium and their “FBS-ready” program. Already some have taken to the papers to talk a little about an FBS move.
And why not? I don’t blame them. As much as I like the Dukes in FCS, I can very much see their team end up in the FBS eventually, ideally as a travel partner/rival to Old Dominion in Conference USA.
