Arkstfan

None of those schools are Division 2.

hehehe he said boobs

I-AA teams can win at I-AA. It isn't a common occurence but it certainly happens. I've not seen UNT play this year, but I've been looking hard at the box scores and drive charts and outside of SMU, you guys look dreadful. Per the SMU fans, it sounds like SMU didn't really go to their true spread offense until the week after your game, I suspect their coach is second guessing that decision right now. The best way to lose to a I-AA is to play them in the season opener or during a losing skid. Eeally I wouldn't be quite so confident regarding Division II. Remember that they are not under the same initial eligibility requirements as I-A and I-AA schools. There is some serious talent at that level, catch a well coached squad that has a decent concentration of that talent and it could be trouble.

Two of New Hampshire's wins came over non-scholarship teams. Yeah they beat NWestern but their only wins are over middling MAC teams and they also lost to Nevada. The Northwestern win was a season-opener and weird stuff happens. Youngstown's wins are over three I-AA's that are combined 5-8 and over a Division II. Montana's wins are over a Division II and two I-AA's that are combined 4-5. Yeah they are solid I-AA teams but it is hyperbole to say UNT wouldn't have a chance to beat any of them.

Sagarin looks at two things. I-AA gets skewed upward because of winning percentage and comparing scores. Right now the Great West is the highest rated I-AA league. North Dakota State is 4-0. They beat I-A Ball State. Ball is 1-4 with losses to two Big 10 schools by a combined 11. Only win was at home against Eastern Michigan (the only I-A ULL has beaten). They routed a Div II They beat two I-AA teams that are combined 1-9 by a combined 21. Cal Poly is 4-1 They routed a Div II They beat three I-AA teams that are combined 6-8 They lost by 10 to I-A San Jose State Southern Utah is 3-2 They beat two Division II They beat 1-3 Texas State They lost to two I-AA's that are combined 6-4 Cal Davis is 2-2 They lost to TCU They lost to 4-1 Youngstown State IMPORTANT. They ROUTED Montana State who had beaten Colorado but has a Division II loss among their three losses. They beat a 1-4 I-AA. South Dakota State is 2-3 They lost to a Division II They lost to two I-AA that are 5-3 (but one had a 1 point loss at Iowa State) They beat two I-AA's that are a combined 2-6. The Great West is rated several notches ahead of the Sun Belt and Sagarin says that three of those teams are good enough to be favored on a neutral site against any Sun Belt team. I don't buy that. Sagarin says that the 2004 Harvard team was 8 points better than 2004 Troy and 13 points better than UNT. For that matter they were rated 2 points better than an 8-4 UTEP team, equal to a 6-6 UCLA, almost seven points better than the Southern Miss team that beat you in the New Orleans Bowl. In fact Sagarin says that team could have stayed within 3 touchdowns of undefeated Auburn that year. Sagarin is interesting, but it does a poor job of comparing I-A to I-AA.

Harry it has looked to me that you are having database issues. I had similar problems and ended up just backing up my whole board and moving it to another database on pair.

I went back and looked at the oldest Sagarin rating available at USA Today. As of right now UNT is rated 1 point worse than at the end of Dickey's first season. MTSU is rated 20 points higher. ASU 14 points higher. Troy is 8 points higher. ULL is 7 points higher. ULM is down 7 points. FIU and FAU were still several years away from announcing their intention to add football. UNT has had something to sell the past few years, the evidence indicates that either the sales didn't get closed or the sales pitch was made to the wrong people.

Right now ULM is the lowest rated Sun Belt team in Sagarin. Their power rating this year would have placed them exactly in the middle of the Sun Belt in 2001. The league isn't growing by leaps and bounds by any stretch but it is improving. Dickey, Howard Schnellenberger and Troy's coach are the only guys in this conference who were coaching their teams in 2001 and that was the first year of FAU football. FIU football wouldn't start until 2002.

Pissin' in the wind, bettin' on a losing friend Makin' the same mistakes, we swear we'll never make again Pissin' in the wind, but it's blowing on all our friends We're gonna sit and grin and tell our grandchildren

The talk in Memphis had been that West and Dunn have been at odds for some time and that Dunn was refusing to make changes West demanded.

1983 to 1986 6-6 4-8 3-8 4-8 4-7

That is why I am so tickled to have Steve Roberts and Dean Lee at ASU. You cannot go to a function where our AD speaks where his talk will not include a list of academic accomplishments. At his request when they had the pep rally to get the invite to the New Orleans Bowl it started with the presentation of the Sun Belt academic trophy to the football team. When Josh Williams didn't want to make some meetings on time and didn't want to do the punishment he was booted from the team and spent a year out of football paying his own way to school. He was a freshman all-american linebacker and could have transferred, could have gone I-AA and played immediately, instead he stuck it out. He is a better player for that. I got to meet the parents of our running back Reggie Arnold. The dad played four years at Purdue and he said that a huge factor in the recruiting process was that the coaches never lied and never blew smoke about what they thought he could do and how they projected him to develop. They didn't always LIKE the answers, but appreciated the truth. Rick Minter once said that the hardest part about rebuilding at Cincinnati was recruiting. He said he had no trouble at all finding stud players willing to come, what he discovered was that there was a reason Cincinnati was still in the hunt. They were guys who had been in trouble or who had a lousy work ethic and the bigger names had lost interest. He said that he started passing on them as well because they were more trouble than they were worth. He said the quickest way to destroy a team is to have a star who is so much better than the rest of the team that he can he can loaf and still be the best player and then choose to play him over the guy busting his tail every snap in practice who isn't as good, because that teaches the team they don't have to be the hardest working, just good enough to be better than the other guy.

Me too. Many of my sports can fly down and play UCF and USF with one round-trip flight and the rental of some vans vs flying on to the next destination. It would also mean my football team is playing in Florida every year instead of every other year.

The sad fact is that the folks in the MWC, CUSA, WAC, MAC, and Sun Belt are too busy fighting each other for position to cooperate. No one is willing to give up what they have for fear someone else might gain. The first step ought to be a bowl alliance. If you had the Liberty, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Motor City and either MPC or New Mexico Bowl in an agreement to fill their ranks out of a pool consisting of guaranteed bids to the champions of the five conferences plus the bowls picks of five of the seven highest rated non-champions it would go a long way toward improving things. There isn't a need for a schedule cartel. It can be done simply by presidents/chancellors directing their athletic directors to schedule no more than one game per season that isn't returned and no more than one I-AA game. In most leagues that leaves two games to fill (three for us until WKU joins). We will then have to play each other home/home or the BCS schools will have to go home/home.

MTSU still almost made it to a bowl and that could have been a whiz bang year for the Belt. Over in the WAC La Tech was 7-4 (7-1 WAC 1st place), Boise State was 8-4 (6-2 WAC) and Fresno State 11-2 (6-2 WAC) were tied for #2 with Boise having won head-to-head. The WAC THOUGHT they were going to send LA.Tech to the Silcon Valley because the Broncos were #2 thanks to the tie-breaker and leave Boise State at home for the Humanitarian. The Silicon Valley Classic jumped the gun and invited Fresno State before the deals got worked out and it was all made public so the WAC couldn't put Boise State there without it looking bad. So the work was underway to cut a deal. The proposal was that La.Tech would go to New Orleans to face UNT. Colorado State would be shifted out of the New Orleans Bowl and over to San Jose to face Fresno State. Boise State would then stay home for the Humanitarian Bowl and face MTSU. The problem was that 1) the Silicon Valley really wanted someone to buy their way into the game and get them badly needed cash, while they didn't want to cut the deal the WAC reminded them they could withhold Fresno State from participating so they finally got on board. 2) The second problem was that La Tech would have had to agree with the shift. Their position was they were league champs and ought to go to a bowl assigned to the WAC and they were not going to do anything to help the Sun Belt, especially if it meant playing a team with a losing record so they vetoed the shift. As a result the Silicon got to sell their game to Michigan State for an amount reportedly in excess of $500,000. The Humanitarian found Clemson was willing to buy $500,000 in tix and invited them to play La.Tech before a sparse crowd. MTSU got to stay home. Tech and UNT both took 25 point defeats for the biggest margin of defeat that bowl season.

HAHAHA I thought it was a real jinx like switching to the wrong shirt on game day.

That's my parents. They helped raise the money for initial construction of Indian Stadium before it opened in 1974 and have had the same seats there since it opened. They are fans but they just can't stand as much as some around us. They tend to save their standing for plays when the opponent is facing 3rd down.

Nada? Is that what the new athletic complex is being called? Is it named after someone cause that name really sucks.

You guys send us a post-card and let us know how that move works out.

If they had thrown on that play and not thrown short of the end zone or taken a sack they would have had one more play and could have run then. Army completed 5 more passes against TAMU for 24 more yards than they did against ASU and threw one more pick against TAMU. Army had 116 more yards on the ground against TAMU than against ASU.

Northern Illinois beat Maryland, Iowa State and Alabama all in the same season for a 10-2 record. What bowl did they play in? None. They finished too low in MAC play that year. The Belt started in the depths of hell. Take UNT's rating in Sagarin last year in finishing last in the Belt. It was high enough to have finished fourth in the Belt in 2001. Akron took a big step toward having its win over NC State last week labeled no big deal, because some people will deem it a fluke thanks to their conference loss today and others will note that NC State got thumped by Southern Miss. The non-conference win theory is almost right. Respect comes from non-conference wins... in December. And to get a shot to play a non-conference win in December, you've got to win in conference play. Fresno State has won or shared nine league titles in I-A. They've finished ranked by the AP twice. 1992 as WAC Co-champs they thumped USC in a bowl and 2004 no title but they beat Virginia in a bowl after beating Georgia Tech and UCLA in bowls. Boise three rankings after 2-1 bowl appearances and league titles each year. It takes both.

Chuck apparently has issues in the first two games of the season. 2000 beat ASU in double OT, that ASU team finished 1-10. Next week eked out a 3 point win over Indiana. 2001 beat a 4-7 SMU team by 9 2003 lost to Wake Forest by 14

Actually Fresno has won or shared three WAC titles, but the last came the first year after the billy goats left to form the MWC.

Tell him to ask the Fins third string QB about his last college game.

Utah State got shut-out last week and fell of the list.