UPS and DOWNS for the Second Week of September, 2015!

DOWNS - your blogger, who's been a day off all week...not because of Labor Day per se, but because he was waiting for the results of the Ohio St/VaTech game Monday night before moving on into the next week...only to then be a day behind! I'll try to make it up by getting our Prophecies column out later today!

DOWNS - the Texas Longhorn football team, who in its last three games has looked nothing like the Burnt Orange Machine of old. The loss Saturday night was almost as devastating as the humiliation to Arkansas in its bowl game last winter, where the Longhorns had one TD drive of 43 yards (two good plays), and a game-total of 25 net yards - meaning that excluding one drive towards the end of the first half, Texas had negative 18 yards of offense for the game. In fact, over the last three games, the Texas offense has been outscored by the opponents' defenses 21-20!

UPS - Temple, who beat Penn St 27-10; Northwestern, who beat Stanford 16-6, and Illinois, who overcame its coaching mess to beat Kent St 52-3. All three have far brighter prospects today than they did a week ago!

UPS - the Canadian rivalries between Calgary/Edmonton, Saskatchewan/Winnipeg, and Toronto/Hamilton. CFL scheduling is a hoot! All three pairs of rivals play home-and-home series over last weekend and this one, building a chance for animosity, bragging rights, fights, and twice as many reasons as usual to hate the other team! Going into this second weekend, let's see if Edmonton, Winnipeg, or Toronto can manage to even the scales at home!

UPS AND DOWNS - it's too early for any adjustments in our Top Eights or Bottom Fives, but here's a sneak peek at the college teams we pushed towards the "first among equals" status on one end, and the "isn't there a tier lower than this?" on the other...
POWER FIVE CONFERENCES: Alabama, Ohio State, Texas A&M, and Notre Dame all looked remarkable this weekend! Meanwhile, Washington St and Colorado lost to middling-to-poor lower level teams (Portland St and Hawai'i, respectively) and don't appear to have improved as much as we'd hoped...i.e., at all.
GROUP OF FIVE CONFERENCES: While Boise St would probably still be sitting atop this group for now, their second half was not impressive, even given the Pac-12 opponent. More impressive were the wins by Western Kentucky (against a vastly improved Vanderbilt), Appalachian St, Temple and Houston of the AAC, and we'll count BYU in this group for now on the strength of its Hail Mary victory at Nebraska. (Speaking of which, don't skip the last UP today!) Downs to the usual candidates: Idaho, Georgia St (lost to newbie Charlotte 23-20), Kent St and Tulane.
FCS CHAMPIONSHIP CONFERENCES: Southern Utah absolutely should have a win over Utah St under its belt today - they dominated the Aggies on defense (13 USU punts!) and were it not for USU's special teams (a blocked XP converted on the other end, and a 4th quarter punt return), Southern wins easily. Credit to the Missouri Valley Conference and Big Sky schools, of course, winning in FBS stadia - South Dakota St, Portland St, and North Dakota. Jacksonville's victory over Chattanooga spoke highly of the OVC. On the down side, the Colonial Athletic Association went 2-9, and it would've been ten losses had Stony Brook's game with Toledo not been cancelled before halftime with Toledo already up 16-7.
HBC CONFERENCES: Alas, off to a bad start at 6-17 across the board, and the six wins included four against lower division opponents and two against each other (Prairie View def Texas Southern; Ark-Pine Bluff lost to South Carolina State).

And finally, UPS to the Mangum family of Eagle, Idaho, who were in Pocatello watching one son make the catch of the day (according to ESPN, who made it Top Ten Play #2) for Idaho State, and were alerted that their other son was in at QB for BYU after the starter was injured, and saw him throw a Hail Mary to the end zone which gave the Cougars the 33-28 win in Nebraska - and was ESPN's Top Ten Play #1 for the day! "What are the odds?" said Dad, "We're just going to enjoy it for now!" This weekend, one parent's headed back to Pocatello and the other to Provo, so they can watch both sons play!

Thursday Thoughts on the FCS Football landscape!

As our oldest son is now in residence at an FCS university (in Pocatello, Idaho, thank you very much!), plus we have a college degree with a rival school from the same conference (in Sacramento, CA), and family ties with a THIRD school in the same conference (in Missoula, Montana), we have a particular fondness for the Division 1-AA "championship subdivision " level of sports, football in particular, and of course that affection radiates from the northwestern sector of the United States, Big Sky country, home of multiple national champions Montana and Eastern Washington, former home of Boise State University (which has since moved on to conquer larger kettles of fish), and the University of Idaho (well, you can't win them all...).

So, without delving into conference and overall records as we did with the FBS last week - simply because we frankly don't know enough about many of the programs except what we read in the box scores - we're game for doing a little more forecasting this week in the twelve FCS conferences: eight who compete for a national championship in a 24-team playoff (hence the name "FCS"); two conferences of erudite Eastern schools who simply have BETTER things to do on a Saturday afternoon in December than watching sweaty men hurl spheroids down a chalk-lined parkway field; and two conferences of historically black colleges (not MY name - they refer to THEMSELVES as "HBCs"!) who choose to playoff against each other instead.

So, in only a vague sense of order of ranking, strongest down...here we go!

MISSOURI VALLEY CONFERENCE: 1. North Dakota St . 2. Illinois St. 3. Northern Iowa, South Dakota St, and Youngstown St. 6. Indiana St. 7. Southern Illinois and Western Illinois. 9. Missouri St. 10. South Dakota. 

BIG SKY CONFERENCE: 1. Eastern Washington. 2. Montana St. 3. Montana. 4. Idaho St. 5. Cal Poly SLO and Northern Arizona. 7. Sacramento St. 8. Southern Utah and Weber St. 10-13. Portland St, North Dakota, UC Davis, and Northern Colorado.

COLONIAL ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION: 1. New Hampshire / Villanova. 3. James Madison. 4. Richmond. 5. William and Mary. 6. Stony Brook. 7. Albany. 8. Maine. 9. Delaware. 10. Towson. 11. Elon. 12. Rhode Island. 

SOUTHLAND CONFERENCE: 1. Sam Houston St. 2. Stephen F Austin. 3. SE Louisiana. 4. Central Arkansas. 5-8. McNeese St, Northwestern St, Abilene Christian, and Lamar. 9. Incarnate Word. 10. Nicholls St. 11. Houston Baptist.

BIG SOUTH CONFERENCE: 1. Coastal Carolina. 2. Liberty. 3. Charleston Southern. 4. Presbyterian. 5. Monmouth. 6. Gardner-Webb. 7. Kennesaw St (in its first year playing football!).

OHIO VALLEY CONFERENCE: 1. Jacksonville St, 2. Eastern Illinois and Eastern Kentucky. 4. UT-Martin. 5. SE Missouri St. 6. Tennessee St and Tennessee Tech. 8. Murray St. 9. Austin Peay.

SOUTHERN CONFERENCE: 1. Chattanooga. 2. Wofford. 3. Samford. 4. Western Carolina 5. The Citadel. 6. Furman. 7. Mercer. 8. VMI. 9. East Tennessee St. (in its first year playing football!)

NORTHEASTERN CONFERENCE: 1. St. Francis-PA / Bryant (winner gets the playoff bid). 3-5. Wagner, Sacred Heart, and Duquesne. 6. Central Connecticut. 7. Robert Morris. 

PIONEER FOOTBALL LEAGUE: 1. Jacksonville. 2. San Diego. 3. Dayton. 4. Drake. 5-8. Marist, Campbell, Morehead St and Stetson. 9. Valparaiso. 10. Butler. 11. Davidson.

The 24 underlined teams are projected to receive bids to the FCS national championship tournament, which has eight teams passing through to the second round with byes. Those eight top-seeded teams are anyone's guess, but here's ours: North Dakota St, Illinois St,  Northern Iowa, Eastern Washington, Montana, Sam Houston St, Coastal Carolina, and the winner of the New Hampshire/Villanova clash. The three bottom conferences will get their champions in only, and here's hoping that for the first time in its three year history, the Pioneer League champ will be able to participate without infraction penalties preventing it!

There are also four other conferences in Division 1-AA: two comprised of elite prep universities in the northeast which choose not to spend December playing football during finals, and two comprised of "Historically Black Colleges" (HBCs), which have their own arrangement with NBC and ESPN for the Grambling/Southern game and the new "Celebration Bowl" title game matching the two league champs. Here are projections for these four leagues:

IVY LEAGUE: 1. Harvard (again!). 2. Dartmouth. 3. Yale. 4-6. Brown, Princeton, and Penn. 7. Cornell. 8. Columbia.

PATRIOT LEAGUE:  1. Fordham. 2. Lafayette. 3. Colgate. 4. Bucknell. 5. Holy Cross. 6. Lehigh. 7. Georgetown. 

SWAC EAST: 1 Alcorn St. 2. Alabama St. 3. Alabama A&M. 4. Mississippi Valley St. 5. Jackson St. 
SWAC WEST: 1. Southern. 2. Grambling St. 3. Prairie View A&M. 4-5. Texas Southern and Arkansas Pine Bluff. (Alcorn St over Southern for the title.)

MEAC: 1. North Carolina A&T / South Carolina St. 3. Morgan St. 4. NC Central. 5. Bethune-Cookman. 6-8. Hampton, Howard, and Norfolk St. 9. Florida A&M, home of the biggest band scandal since Stanford! 10. Delaware St. 11. Our favorite team in the world, good ol' Savannah St, who takes on Florida St and Oklahoma for the paycheck and the 88-0 routs. 

As for the FCS games of interest yesterday,

...let's start with our usual topic of intrigue, really bad teams. Of course, if you're in the Ivy League, you're allowed to be good, bad, or indifferent about football - you're too busy getting ready to run our country in the coming years. 

But in Cornell @ Columbia, two winless teams squared off. Sagarin had this projected as a 3-point Cornell win, and the Big Red did win, 30-27. But the how and why are hysterical: each team scored four touchdowns, but Cornell blocked the extra point on Columbia's last TD and ran it back for their own two point conversion, making it 27-23 at the time and setting the stage for their own game-winning drive in the fourth quarter. 

As for the three other bottom-feeders we follow (three?), Rhode Island actually put up a fight at Stony Brook, losing 14-35. But good ol' Savannah St managed zero points, negative 8 yards rushing, and just 165 yards of total offense in the entire game in losing to North Carolina A&T 34-0. In the true tradition of a body-bag school, Savannah goes to BYU next week, where the early Sagarin ratings list them as potentially a 54-point underdog. And history says they'll lie down and take their beating appropriately.

Who's the third bottom-feeder? In two of those ratings that we linked you to earlier this week, we noticed that there's a team below both URI and Savannah St: Davidson, Stephen Curry's alma mater, apparently doesn't play football as well as they do hoops. They have a record of 1-10 this year, having lost nine straight against FCS opponents and one more to Catawba, who we think is D2. Their one victory was to "College of Faith-Charleston", for whom we cannot even find a listing at any level of NCAA or NAIA, 56-0.

Anyway, playing Marist yesterday, Davidson was down 38-0 with a minute to go in the third, having produced a total of two first downs and 58 yards of offense. As Marist started their mass substitutions, Davidson finally produced a twelve-play, TWO yard drive (that required getting to a 3rd down on the Marist 16 and then ending fourth down at midfield!), which was finally followed by a 13-play drive in the fourth against the last-stringers that scored a late TD to make the score 38-7. It'd be fun to watch them play Savannah St...

In higher-quality news, North Dakota St started a new winning streak, beating Missouri St 45-10, while their vanquisher Northern Iowa also won, beating Southern Illinois 40-21. And out in the Big Sky conference, we were happy to see alma mater Sacramento St win 48-41 at home against Portland St! Montana St held off Idaho St at home 44-39, and Montana beat Southern Utah 35-17.

So much for that 33-game winning streak!

The defending FCS champion North Dakota St Bison didn't just lose yesterday, they were  almost shut out by division rival Northern Iowa, 23-3.

The Bison's 33 game winning streak, encompassing three national championships, was the longest in FCS history. But against the 19th ranked Panthers, they were outgained 306-175, doubled up in first downs, 16-8, went one for fourteen in 3rd down conversions, rushed 28 times and gained only 43 yards, and (with the exception of a turnover on the UNI 12, when they scored their FG) had the following starting field positions, ALL in their own territory: the 25, the 3, the 10, 37, 34, 20, 25, 42, 18, the 8, and the 20. 

On the far end of the spectrum, the two 0-9 teams we follow went to 0-10 yesterday: Rhode Island fell to 8-1 New Hampshire 41-14, while Savannah St lost 51-21 to visiting Howard University. Those streaks now extend to 14 and 19, respectively.

In the Big Sky conference, Eastern Washington beat traditional champ Montana 36-28 on the red field in Cheney to remain in control of the conference title, although four teams share the lead in the loss column: EWU, Northern Arizona, Montana St, and surprising Idaho St, winners against Cal Poly SLO yesterday at home to get to 7-3. In 2013, they went 3-9, the three wins coming against Northern Colorado and two D2 teams; they finished the season on a six-game losing streak and having failed nine of their last ten excursions. Now, they're two games from a playoff berth!

FCS Week 9 in review

Truth be told, we only do a partial review of the FCS level - basically, as reader interest dictates, or ours! - so if you're interested in a team we don't discuss, let us know!

So, North Dakota St won number 33 in a row, after a slight scare (down three at the half) against South Dakota St, 37-17; meanwhile, Rhode Island dropped its 13th straight and Savannah St its 18th in a row...

And in the Big Sky, Eastern Washington annihilated North Dakota 54-3; Cal Poly knocked off previous leaders Montana St 35-27, and Idaho St kept up their turnaround season by winning at Portland St, 31-13.

Finally, Harvard beat Dartmouth 23-12 in the battle of Ivy League unbeatens today!

Bodybag games happen at every level...

At halftime, FCS bottom feeder Idaho State leads Simon Fraser College 42-0. They drove for touchdowns six times and failed twice on downs, eschewing punts against their 1-4 NAIA opponent, who I believe is from British Columbia.  WHY is ISU playing this game? It does them no good for their conference, it isn't a good attendance draw, it was NEVER going to be competitive...just to get a win on their 2-3 record? Bad enough they play D2 teams, but this?