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VMI quarterback Reece Udinski has been named the Southern Conference Preseason Offensive Player of the Year and The Citadel linebacker Willie Eubanks III has been tabbed the Defensive Player of the Year
How do teams outside the FCS “Big Three” conferences take that final step to become national championship contenders, and how do these conferences gain national respect?
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.
It’s the nightmare scenario for any playoff team – seeing your starting quarterback go down midway through the second quarter with an injury. That’s exactly the scenario Kennesaw State found themselves in against Wofford, a battle between triple-option teams with hard-running quarterbacks.
To the delight of Owl fans, QB Jonathan Murphy was able to carve his name on the plank of champions as he rallied his team to a thrilling 28-21 win.
It took a while, but the last train to Clarksville ran all over Furman and left a mark of mammoth proportions.
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.
Austin Peay, the winners of the OVC for the first time since 1977, plays Furman in the first round of the FCS playoffs. It is the first playoff appearance in the history of Austin Peay. The winner of Saturday’s game will move on to face No. 4-seed Sacramento State in the second round of the playoffs next weekend.
FCS First Round Playoff Matchup: Kennesaw State (Big South) at Wofford (Southern) Where: Gibbs Stadium, Spartanburg, South Carolina Saturday, November 30th, 4:00 PM TV/Streaming: ESPN3 (subscription req’d) Kennesaw State Owls (10-2), Head Coach: Brian Bohannon Big South Conference Kennesaw, Georgia The 2019 season for the Owls hasn’t really been that far off their more recent.
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.
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.
Everything has been decided in the Southern Conference with one week to go in the season. Wofford was able to clinch the conference title with its win over Furman coupled by a large blown fourth quarter lead by The Citadel against Chattanooga. Furman should also easily find its way into the field.
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.
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.
We are down to the last two weeks and the Southern Conference has a clear picture of its outlook for the conference title and potential playoff bids. There are three teams in the mix – Furman, Wofford and The Citadel. With a win this week, Furman will clinch the conference title and automatic bid to the playoffs. A Wofford win sets up a week 13 showdown between Wofford and The Citadel – provided The Citadel takes care of business on the road this weekend.
Two weeks to go, and how many autobids have been clinched? How about… none?
The crème has started to rise to the top in the Southern Conference over the last few weeks. With three weeks left in the season, there are three teams left in the mix for the conference title, and those are likely the only three teams who have a shot to make the playoffs – Furman, Wofford and The Citadel.
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.
The SoCon race is still a wide open, with three teams with one conference loss and another three with two conference losses. There is a lot of football to be played and the Southern conference has been wildly unpredictable this year.
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.
With Furman losing at home to The Citadel, the Southern Conference race was ripped wide open. Furman was cruising, leading many to think the league was decided, but outside of East Tennessee State and Western Carolina, there is a path for any of the other seven teams to find their way to the conference title.
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.
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.
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”.
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 a week of thrilling conference rivalries, and it’s the “Military Classic of the South” that yielded the best story of them all.
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.
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.
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.
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 Southern Conference continues to look like a strong league in 2019. But, the one team everyone expected to be the top team in the league, Wofford, has looked anything but strong through two games. The biggest win in week three for the conference was picked up by The Citadel who defeated FBS Georgia Tech in overtime.
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.
It was a week of high-profile Top 25 clashes in FCS this week, as the marquee games of the week pitted Delaware vs. North Dakota State and Eastern Washington vs. Jacksonville State. One was a Bison display of dominance, the other a thriller that could be the game of the year. Adding to the fun of this week’s games was a shootout in Vermillion, South Dakota and another big FBS upset in Georgia.
The Southern Conference continued its slow start to 2019 with only one team picking up a win against an FCS opponent. The one bright spot, Furman, gave Georgia State all it could handle, but just couldn’t finish the job in the end.
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.
The Southern Conference did not get off to a great start in 2019, picking up only two out of conference wins. The poor weekend was punctuated by early favorite Wofford getting easily handled by South Carolina State, a team most picked to finish in the middle of the MEAC. Was it a blip in the radar? Or is the Southern Conference headed for a down year?
The Southern Conference promises to be one of the most tightly contested races in 2019. While the conference champion won’t be determined in week one, there are a couple of matchups that may be remembered in November when the playoff bracket is released.
Its hard to replace a Walter Payton Award winner like Samford has to do with Devlin Hodges. Hodges finished his career at Samford by breaking Steve McNairs 24 year old passing record. A large part of that success was wide receiver Kelvin McKnight.
The Southern Conference is always a competitive league, and 2019. The SoCon only put two teams in the playoffs in 2018, but there was at least one other team with an argument that they belonged as well. In 2019, as many as six teams feel they have at least a shot to qualify for the.
2018 marked the first season in 30 years that Mike Ayers wasn’t the head coach. But the Terriers made Ayers proud in the first year under Josh Conklin going 9-4 including a first round playoff win over Elon.
A yearly competitor for an FCS playoff berth, Furman barely missed out in 2018 after a 6-4 season. The Paladins went 6-2 in conference play, but lost both of their non-conference games: one at Clemson and one at Elon.
Since reinstating the football program in 2015, East Tennessee State has been slowly improving, culminating in an 8-4 season and FCS playoff berth under first year head coach Randy Sanders. The Buccaneers picked up big conference wins over Chattanooga and Furman on the way to the playoffs where they lost in the first round to Jacksonville State by a touchdown.
Chattanooga got off to a promising start in 2018 before losing their last three games to end the season.
The Citadel started 1-4 and finished 4-2 in an up and down season. The biggest highlight came in a loss to Alabama – the Bulldogs went to the half tied 10-10 with the perennial FBS National Title contender. In the FCS, The Citadel performed about to expectations. They will be looking to take a step forward in a crowded Southern Conference this year.
Samford came into the 2018 with high expectations, and was the talk of the FCS after nearly beating Florida State. However, the wheels came off and the Bulldogs lost four straight games before finally getting back on track at the end of the season. The losing streak was too much to overcome for Samford to make the FCS Playoff field.
Outside of an upset win over a struggling Samford team, Mercer won the games they were favored in and lost the games where they were an underdog. That added up to a 5-6 record with a 4-4 Southern Conference mark.
Western Carolina started the 2018 season with three straight wins, but it was all downhill from there as the Catamounts lost their last 8 games of the season.
On November 3rd, the Keydets downed D-II Tusculum 20-11, snapping a 25 game losing streak that dated from 2016. The 1-10 record obscures the fact that VMI gave some major scares to its SoCon opponents, including East Tennessee State, Western Carolina, and VMI’s historic rival The Citadel.
