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Athlon Sports has ranked the FCS conferences and it looks like this (LINK):1. Missouri Valley
2. Big Sky
3. CAA
4. Southern
5. Southland
6. Ohio Valley
7. Ivy League
8. Big south
9. Mid-Eastern
10. Northeast
11. Patriot
12. Southwest
13. Pioneer
For the Ivy League "non-conference litmus test" the games listed are Colgate at Dartmouth on Sept. 28, and Yale at Richmond, Oct. 19.
Green Alert Take: I might add Penn at Delaware on Sept. 21 as another litmus test.
Green Alert Take II: The Ivy League has been steadily climbing up these rankings in recent years.
Green Alert Take III: The Patriot League, meanwhile, has been heading in the other direction.
Green Alert Take IV: You are who you hang out with. Easy to see why the Pioneer Football League wants to schedule the Ivies. Not sure about the other way around.
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So what is the FCS Imperialism Preseason Map? Here's part of the explanation of what the map is all about:
This map assigns each county in the United States to it's closest FCS team. As games are played, winning teams take the land owned by their opponents. This leads to interesting results after several weeks of results accumulate. Beating a team with no land does not result in any land gained for the winning team. ... Division II, III, and NAIA teams are eligible to win their way onto the map by beating landowning teams.Read more and follow the progress of the map HERE.
Dartmouth, by the way, begins the game owning 19 counties covering 17,801 square miles that are populated by 927,628 people. Poor Fordham begins with just 57 square miles although with a population of 1,385,108 ;-)
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One of the few choice nuggets to come out of the Ivy League media day was Princeton coach Bob Surace's remarks about how his school had been in talks at one point with Rutgers about a possible game to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the first-ever "football" game between the schools.According to Surace, there had been mutual interest in a Princeton-Rutgers game until there was a coaching change in New Brunswick and any interest in the game dried up on the banks of the Raritan.
As a result, Princeton will celebrate the anniversary of that historic first game when it plays Dartmouth at Yankee Stadium on Nov. 9.
And Rutgers?
Astonishingly, the school that played in the first football game somehow managed to schedule a bye week and will be sitting on its hands while the rest of the country is celebrating the college game's sesquicentennial.
To make up for that oversight Rutgers has come up with this idea, per a Patch story:
The Rutgers University football team will host a re-enactment of its 1869 game against Princeton on Friday night, Aug. 30, 6:15 p.m., the university announced on Friday. It is in honor of 2019 being the 150th anniversary of the sport of college football. Fans are encouraged to attend the game, which will feature Rutgers Theatre students dressed in late 1800s era costumes.Green Alert Take: A bunch of theatre students dressed in late 1800s era costumes re-enacting a football game. Only at Rutgers. (Insert your own joke here.)
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The BGA Premium opponent preview series begins its look at Ivy League teams this evening with a review of the Brown Bears. The previews will continue in alphabetical order until wrapping up with a look at Yale on Saturday. Practice coverage begins the next night. For more information about BGA Premium or to sign up, CLICK HERE.
