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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It would be nice if Eastern Washington would stop making my sample FCS Playoff brackets look so foolish. The first playoff bracket of the season, I had the Eagles in the field as a seed, mostly on the backs of their potential to win the Big Sky. Two losses and a 1-3 record later, I’m.
The North Carolina A&T Aggies remain No.1 in the BOXTOROW Coaches and Media Polls for the fourth straight week. The Aggies’ reign as the top team in HBCU football goes back to Week 10 of the 2018 season. In the coaches poll, the most significant moves up were made by No. 5 Arkansas-Pine Bluff and.
North Dakota State faced down their first real test of the season and survived. UC Davis give the Bison all they could handle, but in the end, NDSU’s defense saved the day. In what turned out to be the game of the weekend, Villanova showed that their 3-0 start wasn’t a fluke with a 52-45 OT win over Towson. Most teams will be into conference play from here on, so look for the crème to really rise to the top.
The non-conference portion of the schedule is mostly over for the Big Sky with a few exceptions such as UNI vs, Weber this week, Idaho State travels to BYU in November, and a few North Dakota games. So far, the Big Sky is not off to as hot a start as many believed they would.
Without question the top FCS game of the week was the battle of FCS powerhouses in the Fargodome.Returning home after 47-22 victory the week before against Delaware, the heavily-favored Bison had a very tough battle against visiting UC Davis, ultimately winning 27-16 after scoring a late touchdown to finally put the game in the win column for North Dakota State.
