Just a little sports chatter

Its time for the top 5...almost the home stretch. And before I start, this has been pretty cool to do, are 100s of people reading this, well no, but at least I have been able to get some of these thoughts on some form of record and it feels good. Alright, sappiness done. Just like our last entry, the Southland conference is one where it has been good but when the playoffs come around it becomes clear year after year that they are just behind some of the other conferences. And with the turnover at the top, this upcoming season should be one of the more hectic in recent memory Placement Reasoning This is a conference that is pretty good at the top, not much of a middle, then the bottom falls out. Its almost of a mirror image of the OVC with the one exception being the Southland is a deeper conference. But while deeper than the OVC, the same playoff struggles plague the conference. A lot of that has to do with the style of play as it is more of an offensive lead confer...

So taking a quick break from our regularly scheduled programming ( I should do this more often) to talk about something I saw a few days ago. First off, if you are not familiar with the FCS page on STATS it is pretty good and has some stuff that in the future I will be talking about more often. Craig Haley has been at the FCS game for a while now and this latest article is pretty interesting. If you want to read it click here . In the article, Haley references a Football Gameplan (another website that does some good stuff) and they bring up the three-week break between the semi-finals and the national championship. Needless to say, that is way too long and basically kills whatever momentum the playoffs have. And then add on the fact that its the day before the FBS semi-finals it gets lost completely. Seriously if you don't believe me, just watch ESPN coverage of the National Championship, its a joke. I'll take about that more at a later date. But what the people from Football...

And here we are...the final six conferences. What would be considered the Power Six. With these next two conferences, you will get a sense of a bit of a theme and parallel. Along with the Southland, the OVC is a conference in which it is looking for a higher standing. Meaning, it is need of a deeper, more impactful season. In recent memory, it has been looked from the outside as a lower tier conference and while teams have performed well during the regular season, come playoff time OVC teams fall short. Placement Reasoning This one is pretty simple...its the weakest of the Power Six conferences. Looking at the game results from the conference from the last few years you see a common theme. OVC teams tend to have a combination of blowouts (for and against) versus non-FCS, FBS, and low tier FCS programs while having a less than favorable record versus some of the upper-level FCS programs. In addition, over the past few years, when you look at the conference, its been Eastern Illi...

And now we come to the conference that just angers me the most...the Ivy League. It's not because I think its bad or anything, its just those "what ifs?" that dance in my head when I think or talk about them in terms of football. The Ivy League is good but holds this archaic standard where you just go "what about everyone else?" So for all those who don't know, while the Ivy League is eligible for the playoffs and technically has an auto bid (seriously, did not know that) they refuse any and all bids into the playoffs because of the potential impact on academics. So even though every other sport that the Ivy League offers (19 in all) compete in championship play, football is somehow left out because of the Dec school schedule...pfft Placement Reasoning Honestly, this has pretty much everything to do with that giant "what if" question hanging over the head of the conference. How good could they be if they competed for national championships? W...

We've reached a turning point in the countdown...from here on out at least one team from ever post season eligible conference will be a legit contender for a national championship. And with the next conference, that's saying something. The Big South has had national championship contenders in the past but it has also been a conference that has gone thru plenty of change. Since 2013...Coastal Carolina, Stony Brook, VMI, Liberty, and Presbyterian have either all left or will be leaving the conference. And on the flip side, joining the conference...Monmouth, North Alabama, Hampton, and Kennesaw St. Needless to say the conference has been constantly changing, but there still may be some changing still to come. The agreement with the Atlantic Sun conference a couple years ago opens the door for a major merger and more teams in the conference...but time will tell where the Big South goes. Placement Reasoning This is a conference that is regaining it footing after being dealt a co...

And we continue our little journey with a conference that is that perfect mid-card act. The Northeast Conference is a solid, not great conference that every so often steps up and can hold its own against a big fish but what its really there for is to stand toe-to-toe with the other mid-cards and perform well. And that's perfectly fine...it makes for an even conference where no one team has stood tall over the rest of the conference in years. Fun fact, in the eight year since an automatic bid was awarded to the conference, seven different teams have claimed that bid. Talk about parody, and 2018 might be more of the same. Placement Reasoning So I'll admit when thinking about the rankings, this is where I had the most conflict. The argument can be made for the IVY League, Big South, the pervious entry Patriot League, and the NEC to be placed above the other, these teams are that tightly bunched. At the end of the day, I decided ninth would be right because while the parody...

So the list continues with what was the most disappointing conference from 2017. The Patriot League is basically an Ivy League clone with all the schools being  private, really hard to get into, upper level schools with really the only difference being just the fact they aren't all Ivy League schools. Only a few years ago did the conference begin to  offer scholarships to football players and before 1997 was like the IVY League and didn't participate in the FCS playoffs. Oh and lets not forget it has the longest and arguably the best rivalry in college football, more on Lehigh and Lafayette in a bit. But for now we start with the first of a muddled tier of conferences where any of them could easily be placed between 6-10. Placement Reasoning Overall this is a conference that, at it best, rivals the best of the mid-card of conference in the FCS and could be argued is better than the NEC, OVC, etc.  But when you factor in a disastrous 2017, the Patriot League falls...