The Pioneer Football League will begin its 30th season of play this year. Davidson has captured the last two automatic qualifying spots for the league in the postseason. The Wildcats look to make it three in a row.

The Pioneer Football League will begin its 30th season of play this year. Davidson has captured the last two automatic qualifying spots for the league in the postseason. The Wildcats look to make it three in a row.
FCS FIRST ROUND PLAYOFF MATCHUP: DAVIDSON AT KENNESAW STATEWHERE: FIFTH BANK STADIUM, KENNESAW, GA.WHEN: SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27TH, 2:00 PM ESTTV/STREAMING: ESPN+ If you are a fan of running the football, this playoff match-up will be for you between Davidson and Kennesaw State. This game will feature the number one and number two rushing offenses in the […]
If you weren’t following the key FCS Playoff matchups last week involving the playoffs, boy did you miss out!
Jacksonville State, the No. 4 seed in this year’s playoffs, will play host to Davidson, the Pioneer League champion, in one of eight first-round games. It will be the first-ever meeting between the Gamecocks and Wildcats.
The conference schedule for the eight teams that will play in the Pioneer Football League begin this week. The PFL will play a six-week sprint of a spring season before the champion of the league advances to the NCAA Division I FCS playoffs.
CSJ’s Predicted Order of Finish 1. San Diego 2. Drake 3. Davidson 4. Stetson 5. Morehead State 6. Butler 7. Valparaiso 8. Presbyterian Dayton & Marist * (not participating in spring season) 2019 PFL NCAA Division I FCS Playoff Results First Round Northern Iowa 17 San Diego 3 The Pioneer Football League will begin […]
The National Football Foundation (NFF) highlighted today the more than 310 schools and 35 conferences playing college football this spring at the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS), Division II, Division III and NAIA levels. FBS independent New Mexico State will also play games this spring.
The Patriot League’s dilemmas, whether the rest of FCS admits it or not, is the FCS’ dilemmas. And as we inch closer to an alleged 2020 college football season, the NCAA needs to make some things very clear before a huge mess happens.
The Patriot League Office announced on Monday guidance regarding the 2020 fall competition, a list of principles to “guide the development of a Patriot League 2020 Athletics Plan.”
Sixty student-athletes in the NCAA Division I Football’s Championship Subdivision have been named to the 2020 College Sports Journal Preseason FCS All-America Team.
With the first round of the FCS Playoffs now complete, we give you links to all our recaps and our writers’ impression of the games. Monmouth 44, Holy Cross 27 FCS 1st Round Playoffs: Monmouth Overwhelms Holy Cross 44-27 For Hawks First-Ever Playoff Victory Chuck: Monmouth proved they have a balanced offense that can give […]
CEDAR FALLS, Iowa–With Northern Iowa’s offense struggling to make plays, the Panthers got a defensive touchdown and forced four turnovers to advance to the second round of the FCS playoffs with a 17-3 win over San Diego (9-3) in front of 3,743 in attendence at the UNI-Dome. DE Brawntae Wells returned an interception for a […]
The FCS playoffs are finally here! Enjoy the picks of the staff of the College Sports Journal and find out who we think will win the FCS National Championship.
FCS First Round Playoff Matchup: San Diego (Pioneer) at Northern Iowa (Missouri Valley) Where: UNI-Dome, Cedar Falls, Iowa When: Saturday, November 30th, 2:00 PM EST TV/Streaming: ESPN3 (subscription req’d) San Diego Toreros (9-2), Head Coach: Dale Lindsey Pioneer Football League San Diego, California The PFL Champion Toreros enter their fourth straight trip to the FCS […]
Two-time defending national champion North Dakota State (12-0) tops the bracket as the number one seed after winning the Missouri Valley Football Conference. The Bison are making their 10th consecutive and 15th overall appearance in the championship.
Dayton and Drake finished tied for second place in the league standing with identical 6-2 records, while Davidson placed fourth after compiling a 5-3 record.
Using the Sagarin ratings from this week alone to project the FCS playoffs, along with the automatic bid for the conferences that receive a bid, the following would be the playoff teams. These teams are seeded 1 through 24 for the 24 teams that make the FCS playoffs. The seven Division I win criteria was […]
The FCS Playoff Committee has a pretty unenviable job this time around in trying to determine the playoff seeds. With a crazy day of upsets of Montana, South Dakota State, Illinois State and others, teams who looked like certain seeds suddenly look like they are going to be practicing on Thanksgiving Day instead.
Perhaps no bigger matchup looms than when Drake travels to play Davidson. Both teams are tied for second place, along with Dayton, with 5-2 league records. A win by any of those teams will assure them of no worse than a share of second place.
Just like that, we are down to the last week of the regular season. Selection Sunday comes to your airwaves thus Sunday November 24th at 11:30 AM on ESPNU. This past week, six of the ten automatic bids were sewn up. Those bids went to Monmouth (Big South), James Madison (CAA), North Dakota State (MVFC), Central Connecticut State (NEC), San Diego (Pioneer), Wofford (Southern). The Southland will be decided on Thursday night, while the Big Sky, Patriot and Ohio Valley will be decided on Saturday. The top 25 this week will look at each team from the prism of the playoffs.
The Toreros had little trouble in steamrolling their way to another Pioneer Football League championship with an impressive win over Morehead State on Saturday.
I’ve been doing this FCS Playoff field predictions a very long time now, and it’s been a very strange year. It’s not customary for so many autobids to be in doubt this late in the season. But this week, a lot of results came in that clarified five of the autobids.
Drake entertains Dayton in the biggest game of the week in the PFL. A win by the Bulldogs would keep the pressure on San Diego for a fourth straight league title, while a loss would all be assure the Toreos of the outright crown.
Two weeks to go, and how many autobids have been clinched? How about… none?
San Diego has two games remaining during the regular season. The Toreros are scheduled to face Morehead State and Jacksonville in the final two games before the start of the FCS playoffs Nov. 30.
There are three more football weekends to go before FCS Playoff Selection Sunday, where FCS Nation hopes ESPN pronounces all the schools’ names correctly and don’t forget to specify who is home, and who is away in the first round.
Remember when I had Villanova as a seed? Good times. Harken back to when I had Delaware in my field? Yes, way back when – last week. Do you recall the time that I had more than two Southland teams in my bracket? It’s so long ago, why, when it happened, North Dakota State and […]
As of right now, the FCS Playoff field feels like the show “Who’s Line Is It Anyway”, where the picks are just random improvisations of things that end up not making any sense. Nonetheless, we’ll keep pressing on, trying to figure out some version of truth.
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.
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 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 […]
Last week, we shook the dust off our first laughable attempt at picking an FCS Playoff field, and this week, we make another laughable attempt at picking an FCS Playoff field, but with a few more data points so that it’s, well, a tiny bit less hilarious. This week, we saw North Dakota State extend […]
There truly is a never-ending search for content, a fact I was reminded of when I was politely and earnestly asked this week about coming up with an FCS playoff projection for the 2019 season.
Davidson’s narrow win against Georgetown last week was a really nice win for the Pioneer, who went 2-4 in their games last week. This week boasts another interesting grouping of games against the top teams of FCS and sub-D-I opponents.
The PFL starts their 2019 journeys this week with the most diverse out-of-conference slate in all fo the FCS. Butler takes on the defending FCS National Champion North Dakota State Bison, and nearby D-II Union (KY) takes on Morehead State, but the most interesting matchup might involve two surprise teams that could be a big factor in their conference races.
These teams are high caliber teams who will be in contention for PFL crown and the league’s automatic playoff bid.
The Toreros finished 2018 with a 9-3 overall record and a 8-0 mark in the Pioneer Football League to win their third straight PFL title outright and fifth straight including ties but USD did bow out a round earlier than the prior two seasons in the playoffs (a 49-30 first round loss at Nicholls).
The Bulldogs finished 2018 with a 7-4 overall record and a 6-2 mark in the Pioneer Football League to tie for second in the league standings in what would be Coach Rich Fox’s last season with the team as he resigned after the season.
Dayton Flyers Location: Dayton, OH Coach: Rick Chamberlin (83-38), 12th season at Dayton Stadium: Welcome Stadium (Capacity: 11,000) CSJ Projections: 3rd: Pioneer 10th: Ohio 86th: FCS 216th: Division I 2018 In A Sentence: Dayton was 6-5 in 2018, and finished fourth in the Pioneer Football League with a 5-3 record. Three of the Flyers’ losses […]
The Bulldogs got off to a great start with a win at the Missouri Valley Football Conference’s Youngstown State, but could not use that momentum into PFL play to finish 4-7 overall and just 2-6 in PFL play.
The Hatters went 8-2 last season and were in contention for the Pioneer Football League title, had PFL winners San Diego slipped up along the way.
Say what you want about the Wildcats and their feather-light schedule – Davidson was a mighty entertaining football team last year.
The Red Foxes had a chance to end the year with a winning record, but a 31-14 loss to PFL champions San Diego doomed Marist to a 5-6 record. Marist went 5-3 in Pioneer League play, but went 0-3 outside their conference schedule.
The Eagles yielded a staggering 6 touchdowns a game en route to a 3-8 season, giving up 40 or more points in seven of eleven contests. In their two Pioneer Football Conference wins, the defense only yielded 28 and 24 points respectively against Davidson and Valparaiso.
The Crusaders regressed to a 2-9 overall mark (2-6 PFL) after posting a 6-5 mark in 2017 and also lost its head coach Dave Cecchini in the offseason, who left to be the head man at Bucknell of the Patriot League.
A somewhat promising season crashed and burned to a disappointing 2-8 record. In eight games, including one of their victories, the Dolphin defense gave up more than thirty points.
It’s May. Spring football is over, and the preseason camps don’t start for a couple months. We are in the doldrums of the FCS offseason. But at this point, everyone is 0-0 and hope springs eternal. 127 schools think they have a shot to make the playoffs and compete for an FCS Championship in Frisco. […]
Nicholls 49, San Diego 30 Video Highlights Courtesy NCAA.com THIBODAUX, La. – Nicholls State raced out to a 32-point lead over San Diego early in the third quarter and held off a late rally to win its first playoff game in 32 years, defeating the Toreros, 49-30, Saturday evening at Manning Field in John L. […]
San Diego at Nicholls When: Saturday, November 24, 3:00 PM Where: John L Guidry Stadium, Thoibodaux, LA TV/Streaming: ESPN3 San Diego Toreros San Diego, California Pioneer Football League Enrollment: 5,774 FCS Sagarin Rating: 72 Season Recap: The Toreros, who are playing in their third consecutive FCS Playoffs, won the Pioneer Football League with a perfect 8-0 league […]
The 2018 FCS Playoff Bracket was announced on ESPNU on November 18th at 12:30 EST, and the NCAA issued their release about the 2018 FCS Playoff Bracket here. There were some interesting matchups, some shocking omissions, and a lot of interesting twists and turns. CSJ’s Jamie Williams, Kent Schmidt and Chuck Burton followed the picks […]