College football week 14 thread: The Last Boise Scout

Here is this week’s college football schedule. All times Central. Rankings are from the Associated Press poll.

Thursday
Memphis at No. 18 Tulane 6:30 pm ESPN

Friday
Oregon State at No. 11 Boise State 11 am Fox
Oklahoma State at No. 23 Colorado 11 am ABC
Mississippi State at No. 15 Ole Miss 2:30 pm ABC
Georgia Tech at No. 6 Georgia 6:30 pm ABC

Saturday
Michigan at No. 2 Ohio State 11 am Fox
No. 7 Tennessee at Vanderbilt 11 am ABC
No. 16 South Carolina at No. 12 Clemson 11 am ESPN
No. 22 Illinois at Northwestern 11 am BTN
UTSA at No. 25 Army 11 am CBS Sports Network
Maryland at No. 4 Penn State 2:30 pm BTN
No. 5 Notre Dame at USC 2:30 pm CBS
No. 8 Miami at Syracuse 2:30 pm ESPN
California at No. 9 SMU 2:30 pm ESPN2
Auburn at No. 13 Alabama 2:30 pm ABC
No. 14 Arizona State at Arizona 2:30 pm Fox
Arkansas at No. 24 Missouri 2:30 pm SEC Network
Purdue at No. 10 Indiana 6 pm FS1
Washington at No. 1 Oregon 6:30 pm NBC
No. 3 Texas at No. 20 Texas A&M 6:30 pm ABC
Kansas State at No. 17 Iowa State 6:30 pm Fox
Nevada at No. 21 UNLV 7 pm CBS Sports Network
Houston at No. 19 BYU 9:15 pm ESPN

 

FCS playoff field announced yesterday. Montana State the top seed and Dakota schools in the next three slots.

https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nca...ates-selections-2024/6789f1d8fd728d6d6bea19c0

 

Eddie George leading the rebirth of TSU is an underreported story.

 

Good on the Lumberjacks getting in. Won their last five to get to 8-4.

Considering going to the Richmond-Lehigh game on Saturday.

 

Not that I follow it all that closely, but the great and wonderful FCS is in a worse championship rut than FBS ever was with its five-team playoff rotation of Alabama-Clemson-Ohio State-Georgia-Oklahoma.

 

Yep. Either NDSU or SDSU has won it every year since 2012, save for the COVID spring year when Sam Houston won and 2016 when JMU won. Both are FBS now.

Not sure there's a way to fix it. Neither Dakota school wants to move up to FBS.

 

Is Richmond football going to be non-scholarship in the near future? They're headed to the Patriot League aren't they?

 

Oh they both want it badly, particularly NDSU. They've been lobbying for the Mountain West for at least a decade now.

No one wants them because of undesirable geography/market size ... and the fact that both would probably be immediately competitive too.

 

I think the Dakotas have formed a virtuous circle where they draw crowds and put players in the league, so in turn they’re starting to pick off kids who previously might have gone to the MAC or sometimes even been fringe depth at a Big 10 bottom feeder. Why not go play for something meaningful in front of people who care instead of shivering before 1500 bored souls on a November Tuesday in Muncie?

What I’m unsure will happen is when FBS schools add extra scholarship slots in lieu of walk-ons. Is a full ride and a chance to play at Nebraska or Minnesota, even a slim one, more enticing?

 

Patriot League now allows for the full 63 scholarships, like other FCS schools. I think Richmond was super irritated with the direction the CAA took by adding so much dead weight -- Hampton, N.C. A&T, Bryant, things of that nature. The thing is just too bloated. JMU and Delaware moved up, leaving really only William & Mary as a natural rival. No intel, but I have a gut feeling Villanova might jump to the Patriot for football only at some point as well.

 

I saw mentions of this on Bluesky (sorry, “skeets” is going to take a long while to warm up to) but didn’t really get what was happening. An online college football newsletter sponsored and ran a Division III bowl game. Actually makes for a pretty compelling read on how they pulled the Extra Points Bowl off.

Four things we learned from sponsoring our first bowl game

 

Still have scholarships, just aligning with schools with comparable enrollments, academic profiles and budgets. And many of UR's students now come from the Northeast.

As Cosmo said, the CAA is not the CAA of old, without JMU and Delaware. We hope W&M and Villanova follow us; we will continue the South's Oldest Rivalry with W&M, it just might not be the last game of the season. Some of the older alums (unlike myself) who remember the era when we played UNC, WVU, VPI, ECU, etc., on a regular basis are pissed but many others see the CAA as the island of misfit toys it has become and support the move.

If I still lived in the Commonwealth I'd be making some nice trips, to Lafayette, Lehigh, Colgate, Bucknell, Holy Cross ... even Georgetown and Fordham wouldn't be awful. I wish Furman and Elon could also be included but they're a bridge too far.

Furman might be the only campus I've ever visited that's anywhere near as pretty as UR.