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Before the biggest game of the year so far for the Lehigh football program, senior WR Dev Bibbens was left off the depth chart for the Fordham game. Two weeks ago, the New Hope, Pennsylvania native was leveled by a vicious hit to the midsection from a Colgate defensive back, and he didn’t return in.
This week, an unlikely battle for first place in the Patriot League is on the line in the Bronx, and Lafayette and Georgetown battle it out to see if they can get themselves into the league title race.
Last week’s battle of unbeatens ended up not much of a battle – 4-0 Dartmouth jumped all over Yale early and never looked back, crushing the Bulldogs 42-10 and established themselves every bit the frontrunners for the Ivy League title. As we sit and wait for the inevitable clash of titans between Dartmouth and Princeton later in the season, let’s take a look at this week’s games.
The big question in the Missouri Valley Football Conference right now is there a team that can knock North Dakota State off its current winning streak. The Bison have the second best winning streak in FCS history at 27 (second only to themselves of 33 in 2012-14). NDSU also has a league game winning streak.
The Big Sky has been a game of boggle lately as each time you shake it something big changes. Montana and Sacramento State will duke it out for the drivers seat this weekend. Another notable match will be to see if NAU can play spoiler or Weber State will continue to establish their top ten.
After week seven, the Southland has only one team unbeaten in conference play – defending champion Nicholls – after Sam Houston State lost in triple overtime to Lamar. The race is still wide open and the Southland could see anywhere between two and four playoff berths. Southeastern Louisiana lost its second straight contest and will.
With a lot of teams on a bye this week, the SWAC has an uncharacteristically thin slate for week 8. That being said, the top team in the SWAC West is still in action and will need to hold serve to hold off surprising Arkansas-Pine Bluff ,who has a bye.
It’s been a season of highs and lows for Hampton as the Pirates look to be a factor in the Big South race. They will need Saturday to be one of those highs if they are to have any hope of challenging for the conference crown as the Pirates travel to take on Campbell in the Camels’ homecoming.
Both teams find themselves sitting tied atop the Patriot League standings, playing for first place, and unlike last year, there will be no shortage of passion on the field at Jack Coffey Field at 1:00 PM this Saturday.
After their second straight victory, Austin Peay is in firm control of the Ohio Valley race. The leaders of the Ohio Valley Conference will look to maintain their advantage while four other schools hope to
remain within striking distance as second half of the season gets underway on Saturday.
As of Week 8, the top four teams in the MEAC have gone 17-5, with four losses to FBS teams. The only loss to FCS competition is when two of those teams played each other last week, when South Carolina State fell to FAMU 42-38. This week, the MEAC has a another match up that is garnering national attention, and for good reason.
The showdown between Villanova and James Madison lived up to its billing. The game was back and forth until the Dukes took hold in the fourth quarter to pick up the win. Elsewhere in the league, New Hampshire continued its strong start on the road at Stony Brook. Towson and Maine both faltered at home against Albany and Richmond respectively.
It was a light week in the Southern Conference last week, but there was no shortage of fireworks. VMI hit a 56 yard field goal as time expired to send their game with Samford to overtime. In the extra frame, the Keydets were able to come away with their fourth win of the year. Everyone but Samford is in action this week.
Welcome, America, to the FCSP’TID Cover Photo Curse.
Eastern Washington, UC Davis, Jacksonville State, and, last week, Montana State graced this space as rising teams that were all but guaranteed spots in the FCS playoffs after a particularly impressive win, or a gut-check performance.
Call it “Conference Carnage Week”.
High-profile conference games ended upending conference championship races, and further cementing others on top of the standings.
It was a week of marquee matchups across the FCS. North Dakota State, James Madison and South Dakota State all proved that they are the top three teams in the country by dispatching of top 20 opponents, each winning by double digits and scoring three times in the fourth quarter.
Big Sky Week 7 featured a marquee matchup between Montana State and Sacramento State. Even with the game hosted in Bozeman the result was not what many Big Sky fans were expecting. Sacramento State propped themselves into second place in the conference after handling the Bobcats in their own venue. All of the other Big.
The second week of Missouri Valley Football Conference in-conference game resulted in three teams remaining undefeated in conference play. North Dakota State, South Dakota, and South Dakota State are the three schools that moved to 2-0 in league play. NDSU remained the only MVFC undefeated team in all action. This week, NDSU looked vulnerable in.
Here are the Top 25 FCS rankings based on the Sagarin rankings for the week ending Oct. 12th, 2019. North Dakota State continues to hold down the top spot as the Bison had this position since the preseason. CSJ will show weekly rankings from the Sagarin rankings throughout the season and will have a final.
This week’s games feature a couple of challenges vs. the Ivy League, LIU still trying to win their first game in the NEC, and a good old-fashioned western Pennsylvania rivalry game.
Last week’s game of the week lived up to the hype, with Southeast Missouri State defeating Tennessee Tech in double overtime. It was a game the Redhawks needed and they got the job done. At the same time, the Golden Eagles proved they are not a team to be taken lightly the rest of the way. The OVC is wide open with Jacksonville State continuing to struggle.
It’s a week with two Patriot League/Ivy League matchups and two Patriot conference matchups, as Fordham and Georgetown face off against one another in a battle to who can join Lehigh and Holy Cross atop the league standings.
The Big Sky teams are ready to go into the second half of the season and things look wacky. How the season was supposed to go and how it is going for many of the teams is very different. Going into Week 7 the Montanas’ sit at first and second, while Eastern Washington is ninth.
Last week, Nicholls asserted itself as the team to beat by cruising over Central Arkansas. Sam Houston State currently leads the conference at 3-0 and is looking to return to the playoffs after a one year absence. Houston Baptist could not continue its winning ways, falling to Incarnate Word.
The MVFC has two Top 25 clashes again this week with the biggest being Northern Iowa visiting North Dakota State. The other is Youngstown State hosting South Dakota State. Counting two games last weekend here have been 175 games in which two MVFC teams ranked in the top 25 played one another. Of those 175.
After the Big Green took it to Penn last weekend on Friday night, Dartmouth returns home for Homecoming in a huge battle between undefeated teams as they take on Yale.
There were a couple of surprising results in the Southern Conference last week and for vastly different reasons.It wasn’t Furman’ defeat of Samford that was the surprise, but the fact that they won by 44 points. There was also a surprise upset – VMI beating The Citadel for the first time since 2002 in “The Military Classic of the South”.
Villanova and James Madison may have been caught looking ahead to their showdown last week, as both had to survive and win late. Take nothing away from Stony Brook and William & Mary, who gave those two teams all they could handle. The CAA title may well be on the line this week in Harrisonburg.
[ED. NOTE: This morning, Wayne Otto, one of our College Sports Journal contributors, passed away this morning after a short battle with cancer. This piece was one of many great pieces Wayne provided for us here at CSJ, and thought this was a fitting tribute to him. Rest in peace, Wayne.] For years all along.
Don’t bother looking at my previous editions of “Playoffs ‘Til I Die” to get a solid playoff bracket. Like the rest of America, I had Eastern Washington and UC Davis in my brackets and now, let’s just say, they are not. As the Big Sky autobid turns, however, we inch ever closer to a better.
Week 2 of Conference Play yielded fewer surprises in who won and more surprises in how much that team won by. About half of the games were rather close in nature, while the other half proceeded to vast differences. Montana won by 39, UC Davis lost a heart-breaker, and EWU continues to slide into the.
It was another up and down week in the FCS. The top of the order all picked up wins, where the middle and bottom were all over the place. North Dakota State reasserted its dominance. A couple of the early darlings in the Southland, Central Arkansas and Southeastern Louisiana both fell. North Dakota State Bison.
It was a week of thrilling conference rivalries, and it’s the “Military Classic of the South” that yielded the best story of them all.
The Missouri Valley Football Conference got into conference play with all 10 teams playing their first game within the league. Two teams went into their conference openers and only one came out unscathed. North Dakota State went to beat Illinois State on the road easily, while Youngstown State traveled to Northern Iowa and left with.
Here are the Top 25 FCS rankings based on the Sagarin rankings for the week ending Oct. 5th, 2019. North Dakota State continues to hold down the top spot as the Bison had this position since the preseason. CSJ will show weekly rankings from the Sagarin rankings throughout the season and will have a final.
Nobody at Andy Kerr Stadium was sitting down during the last play of the game.
Two enormous conference games loom this week, including one of the better Patriot League rivalry games in Lehigh at Colgate. Holy Cross at Bucknell also kicks off league play for both teams.
The Southland boasts one of the best stories of the early FCS season. Houston Baptist was 2-20 over the last two seasons with just one FCS win. SO far this year, the Huskies have nearly beaten an FBS opponent and rattled off four straight wins. The schedule gets tougher the rest of the way for them, but they seem equipped to get more wins. Bailey Zappe has been phenomenal at quarterback, putting himself on the outskirts of the Walter Payton conversation.
The Big Sky is a pendulum of normal games to chaotic endings many would not have suspected. What will we get Saturday? Despite the Northern Colorado betting line being the highest at 12.5 underdog, I think every team this week has a legitimate shot of winning their perspective game.
Just when you thought Jacksonville State was going to run away with the OVC title again, Austin Peay blew them out last week. The conference appears to be a toss up with three or four teams with a shot at the title. The order will probably change week after week for the rest of the year. The biggest surprise so far has been Tennessee Tech who is out to a 4-1 start. A win this week solidifies them as a contender as well.
The Missouri Valley Football Conference gets into conference action for the first time this week. And what a first week we have!! Two Top 25 match-ups highlight this week. The first is top ranked North Dakota State visiting Illinois State in a 2015 national championship rematch. The other three games in the league play are.
Last week’s Southern Conference slate was headlined by an exciting 4OT game that saw Samford outlast The Citadel 61-55. Samford has rattled off three straight wins after a slow start. The SoCon looks to be shaking down into three distinct tiers with Furman, Samford and The Citadel as the top tier.
This week we see a primetime Ivy League matchup in actual prime time, as undefeated Dartmouth and undefeated Penn face off under Franklin Field’s lights.
To Colgate fans, Lehigh is returning to the scene of the crime this weekend.
That’s because the Raiders’ last Patriot League conference loss came to Lehigh on their home field, Andy Kerr Stadium, two years ago back on October 7th, 2017.
Villanova and James Madison appear to be on a collision course for an epic showdown next weekend after both posted impressive victories over ranked teams last weekend. The winner of that game on 10/12 will be in the CAA driver’s seat. But neither can get too far ahead of themselves since both of them have tough games this week.
The Pac-12 is right. What this bill really is doing is opening up a spigot of money from well-financed actors, and putting it in the pockets of lawyers and sports agents, not athletes.
The North Carolina A&T Aggies continue to hold the top spot in HBCU football as the newest rankings of the BOXTOROW Coaches and Media Polls were released on Monday. The Aggies received all of the first place votes in both polls.
We finally had our first crazy weekend of the FCS season. Eight of last week’s top 25 fell, but we saw the reemergence of a one time national power. Montana travelled to UC Davis and easily stopped the Aggies in a game that was never close. The Grizzlies look like they, along with Montana State and Weber State, are the class of the Big Sky.
Last year, the CAA was the conference of chaos, but the Big Sky is making its case for that title this year. Eastern Washington has been a rollercoaster team, the middle tier is growing with improvement, and even Northern Colorado made a triumphant return to the win column. For anyone who thinks they know it.
A week ago, UC Davis was being lauded for giving top-ranked North Dakota State a true run for their money at their place. Last week, thanks to a sneak Grizzly attack, Aggie fans have to wonder whether they can still make the playoffs.
