Massey Rank (Sept 18)

Sorry about the "other" thread (Sept 1). I don't know how to get rid of it. I deleted the original post but that no longer does it. Perhaps if you delete yours?

Massey composite has us up to #9, but our Win likelihood against Harvard is 45% - down, I believe, from 47% last week.

Let’s go undefeated this week!!

FCS Top 25: Sam Herder’s Ballot For 9-19-2022
Sam Herder by Sam Herder September 18, 2022
SEMO beats Nicholls
SEMO Athletics
I am grateful to again have a vote in the Stats Perform FCS Top 25 media poll for the 2022 season. I’ll publish my ballot every week and provide some reasoning for my order.

Notes at the bottom.

FCS Top 25
25. Northern Arizona

24. Furman

23. Austin Peay

22. SEMO

21. Eastern Kentucky

20. Samford

19. Richmond

18. Eastern Washington

17. North Dakota

16. Mercer

15. UT Martin

14. Holy Cross

13. William & Mary

12. Villanova

11. Jackson State

10. Chattanooga

9. Weber State

8. Delaware

7. Sacramento State

6. Missouri State

5. Incarnate Word

4. Montana State

3. South Dakota State

2. Montana

1. North Dakota State

I reevaluate my order every week, which can result in big jumps and falls. I don’t like to slot teams based on last week’s order since every week of more games we get a clearer picture. So Team A can jump Team B even if both teams had similar wins.

Not nearly as much movement as last week in this ballot.

New to my Top 25 are SEMO and Furman. SEMO has looked great in its two FCS wins, beating SIU 34-31 and Nicholls 42-16. The win over SIU looks even better after the Salukis beat the Big Ten’s Northwestern on Saturday. If you rank SIU after that win, you gotta rank SEMO. And Furman beat ETSU 27-14, who was ranked No. 18 in the media poll, although I did not rank ETSU last week. Still, Furman is 2-1 and 1-0 against the FCS, and its win was deserving of getting into the Top 25.

Dropping out were Rhode Island and Southeastern Louisiana University. I ranked Rhody for the first time last week, putting them at No. 22. It was an easy choice to drop them this week after losing 42-21 at home vs. ranked Delaware in a game that was even more decisive than 21 points. Dropping SLU out was tougher considering it beat CCSU 70-6 after two FBS losses. But again, I reevaluate every week, so I can drop a team even if they win if I feel there are more deserving teams to be in front of them. And I thought SEMO and Furman deserved to be in. I kept NAU in after losing a 50/50 game vs. ranked UND that the Lumberjacks have every right to feel they should have won.

Everything else mostly stayed the same besides flipping a few teams around, like moving Holy Cross up a spot and UND up a few spots.

I kept Montana State at No. 4 and Missouri State at No. 6 for now despite Mo State nearly knocking off FBS No. 10 Arkansas and Montana State getting crushed 68-28 by FBS Oregon State. I decided to wait until this upcoming week’s games to get a better gauge before shuffling things around.

I like to judge teams more based on FCS competition than FBS results. And we’ll see some great measuring stick FCS vs. FCS games in Week 4.

Is Missouri State that good to be up 10 points against the No. 10 team in the FBS? Or was this one of those games where the Bears played out of their minds and it’s a performance they’re going to have a hard time replicating the rest of this season? They nearly beat ranked Oklahoma State last year, but then ended up losing right away in the playoffs. There are past examples of FCS teams nearly beating or even beating ranked FBS opponents, making everyone wonder if they are legit FCS contenders. And then we find out the answer is no. I’ve learned to not overreact to near wins vs. ranked FBS teams. And another reason I’ll stay patient for one more week is because Mo State is hosting highly-ranked South Dakota State this week. That will be a true gauge of how good this Bears team is.

The same patience can be had for Montana State. There are several examples, like Eastern Washington, of FCS teams getting smacked by P5 teams and still making a deep playoff run. I won’t hit the panic button on the Bobcats just yet, because they go to ranked EWU this week. A win there makes us mostly forget about the performance against Oregon State.

I certainly see the argument to elevate Missouri State and downgrade Montana State after this weekend. But we’ll get a much better grasp on how to order the top 6 when Mo State plays SDSU, Montana State plays EWU, and UIW plays rankable SLU.

www.collegefootballpoll.com/fcs/rankings/

#8

Sacred Heart fell off a cliff. Bryant isn't helping us with their performance. This poll has some serious Ivy infatuation. Stonehill is undefeated, and "we should have done this years ago" is probably being heard in Easton (MA).

As we do like to nit-pick here on Crossports, it appears we slid one spot on the FCS Coaches Poll from 12 to 13. To me, this is irrelevant to our game at Colgate, but perhaps the combination of many of those in front of us coming away with W's and the relative "ranking" of Yale meant we slid a spot?

Weber St. jumped ahead of us at 12 and also had a non-Power 5 football win against Utah State earlier this season (pretty much one-sided) so perhaps that gave Weber State some more juice to be in front of us? They beat Dixie State (now know as Utah Tech) who Massey has at 93. Yale dropped 23 spots to 62 (I reference Massey since the Coach's Poll only includes "also receiving votes" and is not a ranking of all teams in FCS).

1. NDSU
2. Montana
3. SDSU
4. Missouri St
5. Montana St
6. Sac St.
7. Incarnate Word
8. Delaware
9. Chattanooga
10. Villanova
11.Jackson St.
12. Weber St.
13. HOLY CROSS
14. William and Mary
15. Eastern Washington
16. Mercer
17. Stephen F Austin
18. Fordham

www.ncaa.com/rankings/football/fcs/fcs-coaches-poll

I guess Fordham at 18 disregards relatively weak opponents who score a lot vs Fordham, and just looks at 3-0

Stonehill is 2-0 but the wins are against D-2 teams Bloomsburg and Post. The rest of their schedule is D-1 so the good times may be over.

The sons of John Harvard will be our best opportunity to move up in the national rankings unless Fordham keeps playing with mirrors and stays undefeated until a defacto league championship game.

Mizz-State vs. SDSU will be a great game and test of top 5 powers. That being said, I almost feel bad for Mizz State having to play Arkansas and then SDSU in consecutive weeks. I am not sure on the injury front, but if they are healthy and playing on home turf, I might have to give the edge to the Bears. They are both conference members of the MVFC, but I do not believe every team plays each other every year.

I like our "pay games" against FBS opponents but I wouldn't mind a top-tier FCS game (especially if it happened to be against an Eastern team such as Nova, Chattanooga, W&M, etc). Of note, with Notre Dame dropping out of the AP Poll, there are no Catholics in the top 25. There are 4 in the FCS top 2 (UIW, Villanova, HC, and Fordham).