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[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.
With the Major League Baseball playoff series in full swing and the National Basketball Association still in its preseason, ESPN will now start beginning the odd day games of the week. Luckily this week, however, there is a very good Group of Five contest that will allow the nation’s college football fans to witness as.
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.
Five players including James Proche from SMU, Jonahtan Ward from Central Michigan, Dan Ellington from Georgia Southern, Jarell White from Cincinnati, and Maurice Alexander from FIU have been selected as the College Sports Journal All-Stars for the week ending Oct. 7th, 2019 from the NCAA Division I FBS Group of Five schools. The honorees are.
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 FBS Group of Five (G5) rankings based on the Sagarin rankings for the week ending Sept. 28th, 2019. UCF remains the top ranked team this week despite the Knights losing this week at Cincinnati. UCF has held the spot since the preseason poll. CSJ will show weekly rankings from the.
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.
Wow, what a game in Dallas!! SMU came back from a three touchdown deficite to win in three overtimes over Tulsa. The Mustangs remain undefeated with the come-from-behind victory. Memphis also in the AAC West remained undefeated with its win at the Sun Belt’s Louisiana-Monroe. UCF lost to Cincinnati to likely be out of the.
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.
The Group of Five schools have several byes this week but also some very compelling match-ups There are several intriguing match-ups this Saturday with three Top 25 Sagrain head-to-head games. I will offer my predictions on all the Sagrain Top 25 teams match-ups this week. The game of this week happened on Friday with UCF falling.
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.
The big game not only of Friday night but really in all of the Group of Five has UCF visiting Cincinnati. This was the preseason top two squads in the media (and my picks) for the American Athletic Conference’s East Division. The two teams met in Orlando last year with UCF blowing out the Bearcats.
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.
Two Group of Five games highlight this Thursday with two of the four teams really needing a win to get on the right track towards a bowl bid. The first game of the night is Georgia Southern at South Alabama in a Sun Belt Conference cross-divisional contest. The second game starts a half hour later.
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.
Five players including Omar Bayless from Arkansas State, Jack Abraham from Southern Miss, Shakif Seymour from Toledo, Benny Walls from Tempe, and Savon Scrarver from Utah State have been selected as the College Sports Journal All-Stars for the week ending Sept. 30, 2019 from the NCAA Division I FBS Group of Five schools. The honorees.
Week 5 was a slow week in the MVFC with just two teams in action this week. However, there was one big game to finish out the MVFC-Big Sky Challenge. Northern Iowa traveled to Weber State in a battle of Top 10 ranked teams. Youngstown State was the other team in action this week in.
Here are the Top 25 FBS Group of Five (G5) rankings based on the Sagarin rankings for the week ending Sept. 28th, 2019. UCF remains the top ranked team this week as the Knights have held the spot since the preseason poll. CSJ will show weekly rankings from the Sagarin rankings throughout the season and.
Here are the Top 25 FCS rankings based on the Sagarin rankings for the week ending Sept. 28th, 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.
On a hot, humid late September afternoon at Murray Goodman Stadium, Gilmore won his first football game as head coach, finally outlasting visiting Merrimack 10-3 in a game where defense and special teams were the order of the day.
One of the longest days in Appalachian State football history gravitated well into the evening as the Mountaineers opened their Sun Belt Conference opener against Coastal Carolina.
But even a two-hour and three-minute lightning delay couldn’t slow down the ASU attack in the 56-37 victory over the Chanticleers.
Week 5 saw many of the Group of Five conferences getting into conference action. This week I will go through each of the five conferences to give a highlights from each conference, as well as the five G5 independents. Overall, the Group of Five lost two undefeated team with UAB and Navy falling out of.
It wasn’t the sort of game for the NFL’s Red Zone channel. It wasn’t for people who love power rushing, precision passing, or turnover-free ball. But it was a win that the Lehigh Mountain Hawks will happily take. The Lehigh Mountain Hawks had six sacks and kept Merrimack out of the end zone, and rode.
A brand-new rivalry is spawned in the NEC and a league tilt between St. Francis (PA) and Bryant feature this week.
League play starts next week, but the teams of the Patriot League need some help in out-of-conference this week if at all possible. As a conference, the Patriot League is a combined 4-20 out of conference, with one of those wins coming against a Division III school. With an FBS school, several daunting Ivies, and a CAA school, fans of Patriot League schools are hoping for upsets this week.
The non-conference standings are not indicative of how the whole season will go, but it gives an innate sense of how well the team is prepared. Other factors include first glances at new coordinators, injuries during games and persisting, chemistry between new rosters, and a little bit of luck. While no Big Sky teams have.
Jacksonville State, as usual, is carrying the banner for the OVC. The only other team having real success in the non-conference portion of the schedule is Tennessee Tech. Other than those two teams, the OVC has shown very poorly against non-conference opponents.
Campbell coach Mike Minter just wanted his kicker to have a fair chance to score the winning points. With an accurate snap and clean hold, Minter believed in Colin Gary’s leg even if the stats – 4 of 11 in his career, 1 of 2 on the night, career-long of 37 yards – said otherwise.
The Group of Five schools are now starting to get into conference action. There are several intriguing match-ups this Saturday but none that are the definite game of the week. Because of this, I will offer my predictions on all the Sagrain Top 25 teams match-ups this week. Looking at this Top 25 rankings there.
1/3 of the way through the season, there are still a large number of Southland teams in contention for the league title. What was already thought to be a crowded field has only gotten more crowded with the level of play of Southeastern Louisiana.
The Southern Conference continues to confound the rest of the FCS world. As soon as you think a team is heading in one direction, they turn it the other way. Samford looked lost early in the year, but now has two big wins in a row. ETSU lost to VMI, but turned around and picked up a win over Austin Peay. VMI couldn’t continue the momentum from their victory over ETSU, losing to lowly Robert Morris.
This week, most of the Missouri Valley Football Conference teams have a bye week but two teams are still in action. One of the games this week is a match-up of two Top 10 teams in the final Big Sky-MVFC matchup with Northern Iowa visiting Weber State. The MVFC has already won this year’s challenge.
A week ago there probably wasn’t a Group of Five game worthy of a game of the night but that was before San Jose State rattled into Fayetteville, Arkansas and defeated the SEC’s Razorbacks 31-24. This week, those Spartans travel to Colorado to face Air Force. The Falcons themselves come into this off a road.
In the end, the matchup this weekend will be a show-me type of game, one that might set the trajectory for both programs.
The Ivy League had a hugely successful opening weekend, as many expected. As a whole the Ancient Eight went 6-2, the only losses coming from a missed two-point conversion attempt by Penn at Delaware, and a furious Harvard rally falling short to San Diego. This week the Ivy League seems poised to have another great week, and additionally league play is starting with two early-season conference tilts.
Villanova showed that they are not to be forgotten in the CAA race in 2019. The Wildcats went toe to toe with the best offense in the conference – Towson – and came away victorious. Daniel Smith has been spectacular through four games with 13 touchdowns passing and four more rushing. Most teams in the CAA are getting into conference play from here on out so the path to the playoffs is going to start to clear up.
[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.
With the Major League Baseball playoff series in full swing and the National Basketball Association still in its preseason, ESPN will now start beginning the odd day games of the week. Luckily this week, however, there is a very good Group of Five contest that will allow the nation’s college football fans to witness as.
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.
Five players including James Proche from SMU, Jonahtan Ward from Central Michigan, Dan Ellington from Georgia Southern, Jarell White from Cincinnati, and Maurice Alexander from FIU have been selected as the College Sports Journal All-Stars for the week ending Oct. 7th, 2019 from the NCAA Division I FBS Group of Five schools. The honorees are.
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 FBS Group of Five (G5) rankings based on the Sagarin rankings for the week ending Sept. 28th, 2019. UCF remains the top ranked team this week despite the Knights losing this week at Cincinnati. UCF has held the spot since the preseason poll. CSJ will show weekly rankings from the.
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.
Wow, what a game in Dallas!! SMU came back from a three touchdown deficite to win in three overtimes over Tulsa. The Mustangs remain undefeated with the come-from-behind victory. Memphis also in the AAC West remained undefeated with its win at the Sun Belt’s Louisiana-Monroe. UCF lost to Cincinnati to likely be out of the.
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.
The Group of Five schools have several byes this week but also some very compelling match-ups There are several intriguing match-ups this Saturday with three Top 25 Sagrain head-to-head games. I will offer my predictions on all the Sagrain Top 25 teams match-ups this week. The game of this week happened on Friday with UCF falling.
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.
The big game not only of Friday night but really in all of the Group of Five has UCF visiting Cincinnati. This was the preseason top two squads in the media (and my picks) for the American Athletic Conference’s East Division. The two teams met in Orlando last year with UCF blowing out the Bearcats.
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.
Two Group of Five games highlight this Thursday with two of the four teams really needing a win to get on the right track towards a bowl bid. The first game of the night is Georgia Southern at South Alabama in a Sun Belt Conference cross-divisional contest. The second game starts a half hour later.
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.
Five players including Omar Bayless from Arkansas State, Jack Abraham from Southern Miss, Shakif Seymour from Toledo, Benny Walls from Tempe, and Savon Scrarver from Utah State have been selected as the College Sports Journal All-Stars for the week ending Sept. 30, 2019 from the NCAA Division I FBS Group of Five schools. The honorees.
Week 5 was a slow week in the MVFC with just two teams in action this week. However, there was one big game to finish out the MVFC-Big Sky Challenge. Northern Iowa traveled to Weber State in a battle of Top 10 ranked teams. Youngstown State was the other team in action this week in.
Here are the Top 25 FBS Group of Five (G5) rankings based on the Sagarin rankings for the week ending Sept. 28th, 2019. UCF remains the top ranked team this week as the Knights have held the spot since the preseason poll. CSJ will show weekly rankings from the Sagarin rankings throughout the season and.
Here are the Top 25 FCS rankings based on the Sagarin rankings for the week ending Sept. 28th, 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.
On a hot, humid late September afternoon at Murray Goodman Stadium, Gilmore won his first football game as head coach, finally outlasting visiting Merrimack 10-3 in a game where defense and special teams were the order of the day.
One of the longest days in Appalachian State football history gravitated well into the evening as the Mountaineers opened their Sun Belt Conference opener against Coastal Carolina.
But even a two-hour and three-minute lightning delay couldn’t slow down the ASU attack in the 56-37 victory over the Chanticleers.
Week 5 saw many of the Group of Five conferences getting into conference action. This week I will go through each of the five conferences to give a highlights from each conference, as well as the five G5 independents. Overall, the Group of Five lost two undefeated team with UAB and Navy falling out of.
It wasn’t the sort of game for the NFL’s Red Zone channel. It wasn’t for people who love power rushing, precision passing, or turnover-free ball. But it was a win that the Lehigh Mountain Hawks will happily take. The Lehigh Mountain Hawks had six sacks and kept Merrimack out of the end zone, and rode.
A brand-new rivalry is spawned in the NEC and a league tilt between St. Francis (PA) and Bryant feature this week.
League play starts next week, but the teams of the Patriot League need some help in out-of-conference this week if at all possible. As a conference, the Patriot League is a combined 4-20 out of conference, with one of those wins coming against a Division III school. With an FBS school, several daunting Ivies, and a CAA school, fans of Patriot League schools are hoping for upsets this week.
The non-conference standings are not indicative of how the whole season will go, but it gives an innate sense of how well the team is prepared. Other factors include first glances at new coordinators, injuries during games and persisting, chemistry between new rosters, and a little bit of luck. While no Big Sky teams have.
Jacksonville State, as usual, is carrying the banner for the OVC. The only other team having real success in the non-conference portion of the schedule is Tennessee Tech. Other than those two teams, the OVC has shown very poorly against non-conference opponents.
Campbell coach Mike Minter just wanted his kicker to have a fair chance to score the winning points. With an accurate snap and clean hold, Minter believed in Colin Gary’s leg even if the stats – 4 of 11 in his career, 1 of 2 on the night, career-long of 37 yards – said otherwise.
The Group of Five schools are now starting to get into conference action. There are several intriguing match-ups this Saturday but none that are the definite game of the week. Because of this, I will offer my predictions on all the Sagrain Top 25 teams match-ups this week. Looking at this Top 25 rankings there.
1/3 of the way through the season, there are still a large number of Southland teams in contention for the league title. What was already thought to be a crowded field has only gotten more crowded with the level of play of Southeastern Louisiana.
The Southern Conference continues to confound the rest of the FCS world. As soon as you think a team is heading in one direction, they turn it the other way. Samford looked lost early in the year, but now has two big wins in a row. ETSU lost to VMI, but turned around and picked up a win over Austin Peay. VMI couldn’t continue the momentum from their victory over ETSU, losing to lowly Robert Morris.
This week, most of the Missouri Valley Football Conference teams have a bye week but two teams are still in action. One of the games this week is a match-up of two Top 10 teams in the final Big Sky-MVFC matchup with Northern Iowa visiting Weber State. The MVFC has already won this year’s challenge.
A week ago there probably wasn’t a Group of Five game worthy of a game of the night but that was before San Jose State rattled into Fayetteville, Arkansas and defeated the SEC’s Razorbacks 31-24. This week, those Spartans travel to Colorado to face Air Force. The Falcons themselves come into this off a road.
In the end, the matchup this weekend will be a show-me type of game, one that might set the trajectory for both programs.
The Ivy League had a hugely successful opening weekend, as many expected. As a whole the Ancient Eight went 6-2, the only losses coming from a missed two-point conversion attempt by Penn at Delaware, and a furious Harvard rally falling short to San Diego. This week the Ivy League seems poised to have another great week, and additionally league play is starting with two early-season conference tilts.
Villanova showed that they are not to be forgotten in the CAA race in 2019. The Wildcats went toe to toe with the best offense in the conference – Towson – and came away victorious. Daniel Smith has been spectacular through four games with 13 touchdowns passing and four more rushing. Most teams in the CAA are getting into conference play from here on out so the path to the playoffs is going to start to clear up.
