Aug 22
Simply put, I can’t put forth the time to get them done before the season starts… and the pageviews since I started posting them have been all but non-existent. This isn’t petulance; it’s a cost-benefit analysis. I can’t spend 11 hours a day for the next ten days doing this for no reason whatsoever.
Sorry.
Indianapolis has departed, as their primary conference (Great Lakes Valley) now sponsors football. However, three new teams enter the fray as Notre Dame (OH), Walsh, and Malone join the conference, ballooning the field to sixteen teams. The coaches seem unsure about the North Division, although Grand Valley State had a comfortable lead as their pick for #1; Hillsdale and 2011 D-II runner-up Wayne State also received significant support for the #1 spot in the North, which is going to be tougher with those two teams moving from the South Division. Ashland is a much clearer pick in the South now that their rivals have scooted north.
Team capsules follow:
Last year, Towson and Old Dominion shocked the league, having been predicted to finish in the last two spots in the standings. Instead, Towson won the conference title outright, and Old Dominion tied for second, with both teams making the FCS playoffs. This year, the two teams return 32 starters between them, and are expected to finish atop the circuit. Oddly, the national media has James Madison ranked higher than either team, so you can consider this a three-team race (though JMU is probably being overrated in the national poll).
Of course, Old Dominion might finish in first place yet not win the conference title, as they’ve been declared ineligible for the crime of agreeing to leave and join Conference USA. Also ineligible is Sun Belt-bound Georgia State, but they’re not relevant to the conference race. Next year, their places will be taken by two teams which made the playoffs last year (and should again this year), Albany and Stony Brook.
As always, this is probably the best conference in FCS, and when the playoff field is selected in November several of these teams will be there. Six teams are ranked in the FCS poll. But strange things happen in the Colonial, and you can’t be too surprised if they send five teams to the playoffs and two of them weren’t expected to contend. And with that… capsules:
On the edges, there is no doubt in the minds of the league’s coaches and media as to who belongs where. Stony Brook took 15 of 18 first place votes, and are ranked 17th in the TSN Division I FCS pre-season poll as well. Liberty was a clear choice for second, while VMI and Charleston Southern were pretty much uncontested selections for the final two places in the standings. It’s the middle that’s muddy, and we’ll get to that in a bit.
First, though, is the gorilla in the room. The defending champions and prohibitive favorites are playing their final year in the conference, as they and their first-round playoff opponents from last year (Albany) are joining the CAA to shore up the leaks caused by the departures of UMass, Old Dominion, and Georgia State. That will leave the Big South with only six teams, which is still enough to retain the autobid, but… but. Liberty is actively studying a move to FBS. Coastal Carolina is looking for other options. So, what are the Big South’s options if it comes down to it?
Campbell is a member of the conference for basketball, and plays non-scholarship football in the Pioneer League; they could opt to start giving scholarships and bring their program into the fold. Winthrop, also a member of the conference, has pondered adding football in the past. The Atlantic Sun has a few teams either playing football in the PFL, or looking into football. So they’ve got outs if they need them, assuming they can get schools to play along.
Our digression complete, on to the team capsules:
Yet another conference with limited pre-season information, which is making this job frustrating; no team capsules. This will be the first season that the conference gets to play a full schedule, and it should be a barn-burner. The top three teams were separated by the merest of margins in the coaches’ poll. Henderson received four first-place votes and 57 points; East Central and Ouachita each polled 54 points with ECU getting three first-place nods to Ouachita’s two. That fits with last season’s results quite nicely.
The bottom four teams all received 22 points, so the second division of the conference can be expected to be a mess too. The only thing the coaches really seem in sync with is Harding’s position as the fourth-place team. It’s clear that Arkansas-Monticello is expected to fall off a good bit, while Arkansas Tech is figured to improve.
Southern Nazarene and Northwest Oklahoma State still aren’t eligible for the conference title; SNU will be next year, while NWOSU has to wait until 2014 as their application to join Division II was denied last year, but accepted this July.
The ECFC hasn’t offered anything up regarding the upcoming season, and even information from the members is sparse. Therefore, you get my unvarnished opinion. New York Maritime was the pick last year, and did well but faltered when it mattered. Norwich started slowly and then picked up steam. This coming year, a lot of what made Maritime go the last two seasons will be gone, while Mount Ida’s been building something slowly; I’m going to predict the Mustangs move up to second this year. Norwich will still be led by Kris Sabourin and their crazy effective option attack, and shouldn’t have much trouble repeating.
Sorry for such a short preview, but here we are.
The CCIW is another conference which is behind the curve getting media information out. For the CCIW, this has been a thing both pre-season and even in-season for the entire time I’ve been doing this blog. Hopefully they’ll improve soon (and in fairness, they did present live chat sessions with the coaches for media days this year), but for now all I really have to work with is the pre-season poll and some random bits from the schools. As a result, no team capsules here.
That said, North Central and Wheaton are, as usual, the front-runners. It’s a clear edge for North Central in first-place votes, but not in overall poll points where the margin was much narrower; there was support for Illinois Wesleyan in the #2 spot, as one might expect from a playoff team from last year, from voters who picked Wheaton at #1. The one thing everyone agrees on, however, is that North Park is going to finish dead last, and I mean that literally. Every single ballot had them in eighth place.
Johns Hopkins rolled the league last year behind a ridiculous offense that outscored the second-best offense in the league by over 25% and a defense which was twice as stingy as the league’s fourth-best. However, the top four teams in the conference lose over half their starters, and while Hopkins still appears to be the odds-on favorite, that sort of chaos leaves things wide open for a team which adds the right parts.
Note the Centennial does not name a pre-season all-conference team. However, they are on top of things enough to allow me to provide team capsules after the jump.
In ten out of the twelve years of this league’s existence, either Northwestern Oklahoma State and/or Southern Nazarene have won or shared the conference title. They are now officially gone to NCAA Division II and the Great American Conference, Southern Nazarene walking off with the conference title and a playoff game. In the near term, that almost certainly leaves Langston as the conference’s monolith; whether they dominate in years to come remains to be seen, but this year? Forget it. Langston’s so confident in this year’s success in conference that they’re going to go play a road game at defending NAIA champions Saint Xavier in the non-conference schedule.
And confident they should be. Bacone is the only thing even resembling a threat here. Texas College is coming off a winless season and doesn’t look very much improved, while Southwestern Assemblies was no great shakes last year. Contrast that with Bacone, who went 5-6 but were only outscored by six points; while removing NWOSU and SNU will benefit everyone, the absence is especially relevant for a team which just needed them to be gone to get over a hump.
As always, Oklahoma Panhandle State’s primary affiliation is as an NCAA Division II independent; they are ineligible for the conference championship, and their games do not count in the standings. Next year will see another new addition to the conference as Oklahoma Baptist joins the circuit with their brand new football team; their stay will likely be short-lived, though, as they’re already trying to get into Division II.
No team capsules for this preview.
With McMurry gone, moving to D-II, fourth-ranked Mary Hardin-Baylor is the runaway favorite to win the ASC this year. Louisiana and Hardin-Simmons could give them a challenge, but picking the Cru is a pretty safe bet. It’s likely that the second-place team here will find their way into the D-III playoffs, though. Of course, the important question here goes beyond the conference championship: can Mary Hardin-Baylor get over the hump and break the Whitewater-Mount Union stranglehold on the Division III championship game?
The ACS doesn’t name a pre-season all-conference team, but they do pick three pre-season player of the year selections. UMHB QB LiDarral Bailey was the pick for Offensive Player of the Year, while his teammate LB Javicz Jones was chosen as the Defensive Player of the Year. Special Teams Player of the Year went to Texas Lutheran placekicker Allen Cain.
No team capsules for this preview.