Archive For The “Sam Houston State” Category
If you’d like, you can check out my FCS Top 25 vote below.
It was a crazy week no matter how you look at it, with four Top Ten teams falling from the ranks.
But none was more shocking than 3-5 Mercer upsetting 6-2 Chattanooga, 17-14.
The Bears, who only resumed football three years ago, have only offered football scholarships over the last two years, which makes the upset just that much more stunning of a team that was considered the prohibitive favorite from the SoCon this season.
Mercer’s three wins came against non-scholarship Stetson, under-scholarshipped Austin Peay, and winless East Tennessee State, themselves in their first season resuming football.
The Bears’ first win against a fully-funded school symbolized the craziness of last weekend’s scores.
If you’d like, you can check out my FCS Top 25 vote below.
A question FCS voters frequently get is: How to rank FCS over FBS upsets?
Bascially, the same questions plaguing rankings on the FBS side (“Is Jacksonville State simply a really, really good FCS team? Or is Auburn really bad?) cuts the other way in the FCS world.
Jacksonville State almost beat Auburn. But the meaning of that close shave is still undetermined. Auburn didn’t look like much last week after being dominated by LSU. What if the Tigers finish under .500? How will Jacksonville State’s close shave look then?
With Furman’s upset over UCF 16-15, we have another opportunity to play the game of “how good is this team, really?” Furman’s in my Top 25, barely, mostly on the back of their upset win against a team that quite recently was seen as a quality mid-major in the FBS world. But the Paladins are 1-2, though with one of the toughest schedules in FCS. So, again: How good was the win?
If it’s late May, it’s magazine season.
With the season still three months away – the official kickoff to the FCS football season, North Dakota State at Montana, will be happening on August 29th on ESPN – the big way to whittle away the time is to look at the many FCS Top 25’s that are getting published in airport reading material such as Athlon and The Sporting News.
Preseason Top 25’s are not right or wrong – they’re just one sportswriter’s opinion on the top teams going into the season.
So I figure, I’ve got as good as opinion as anyone else – so why don’t I post my Top 25 here, and let people read that when they go on an airplane this summer and head to the beach, the lake, or wherever their hearts take them?
So here we go: My preseason Top 25, from No. 25 to No. 1. As a added, free bonus, you’ll learn exactly why I put each team where I did.
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It’s that time of the week where I share with you your weekly Lehigh fan viewing guide for Week 10 of the college football season. Why go to website after website when all the information you need is right here?
If there was ever a week where you, dear Reader, needed this page, it’s this week, since Lehigh has their bye week.
Fortunately for all of us (and, of course, I include myself in this), there are a boatload of important games available on live streams to watch this weekend. Many, many of them are free.
It’s worth popping open a Yuengling and getting the yard work done early.
My vote for the FCS Top 25 for the week ending 10/21/2013 follows below the flip.
But first, check out this great picture from New Hampshire of OL Ricky Archer and OL Joe Coccia celebrating what may have been the most thrilling game of the weekend, a thrilling 29-28 win by New Hampshire over Villanova that featured a tie and two lead changes in the final two minutes. (Photo Credit: John Tully/Concord Monitor)
From the article:
The season’s playoff hopes were about dead after Villanova (4-3) scored two touchdowns in a span of 46 seconds to take a 28-21 lead with 1:09 left in the game. But UNH got a 35-yard kickoff return from RS Dalton Crossan, plus 15 yards on a late-hit personal foul, to take over at the 50 with 1:02 on the clock. New Hampshire survived a fumble on an attempted hook-and-ladder play, got a pair of catches from RB Chris Setian for 24 total yards, and then QB Sean Goldrich (21-for-28, 236 yards, touchdown) turned a broken play into a 4-yard touchdown scramble to pull his team within one, 28-27, with just under 14 seconds remaining.
That put the pressure on head coach Sean McDonnell to decide whether or not to go for two. He said that offensive coordinator Ryan Carty “was pretty adamant” about going for the win.
“And I just felt, too, that if we were going to win it, we were going to win it there,” McDonell said. “Just felt like the momentum was there and I thought maybe they’d be a little bit on their heels.”
It turned out that Villanova was ready for Setian, but the senior captain bulled to the game-winning conversion anyway, capping a stellar day – career-high 88 yards on 12 carries and three catches for 28 yards.
Overall, people in the Northeast are tough.
Maybe it’s the cold, New England winters, the thick atmosphere around the financial and media centers of the large cities, or maybe it’s just something in the cold melted waters in the tiny hills we call mountains.
Or maybe it’s some of the calamities we’ve had over the last decade-plus. 9/11. Terrorism threats. Multiple storms that have knocked out power, crippled businesses and wrecked homes.
The latest happened this Friday, in a tiny, upper middle-class Connecticut hamlet only a half an hour from where I grew up.
My toughness, and a lot of the toughness that exemplify many of the people in the Northeast, disappeared.
Like many others, I wept for the victims of Newtown. But I was also appreciative for two hugely entertaining FCS football games that provided a very welcome distraction from the horrible events of Friday.
My vote for the FCS Top 25 for the week ending 9/22/2012 follows below the flip.Read more ยป
