After several years I stopped participating in Top-25 polls because to make an informed vote required more time than I was willing to give to the task. During the regular season it meant not just checking scores, but the records of the opponents ranked teams were playing as well as who those opponents had already played, and then comparing all of that for one team to all of that for another, and another, and another. There's a reason why so many football coaches understandably pawn off voting in their polls to their sports information directors.
Voting wisely in a preseason poll is even harder. The right thing would be to pull up information on each team starting with letterwinners, starters and all-league players returning and lost, but it would be a shock if anyone did much of that at the FCS level, especially for teams outside of the Top-10.
By way of background, I can tell you I've been working for days attempting to build up a dossier on each of Dartmouth's opponents for the BGA Premium preview series and it's a ton of work. And that's for just 10 teams, with seven being programs with which I am very familiar. Complicating matters even more for anyone trying to vote intelligently, while the Ivy League has sports information offices that generally provide detailed information on their football teams that's simply not the case with a lot of schools, something I've learned the hard way while doing BGA previews over the last 15 years.
Preseason polls like this – and with STATS being the bible of the FCS this is the best – are generally more about what happened the year before than what will happen in the year ahead, and are more reflective of the overall respect for the individual programs than of how they actually compare to each other.
Keeping all of that in mind . . .
STATS FCS PRESEASON POLL
1. North Dakota State (15-0), 3,971 points (142 first-place votes); Final 2018 Ranking: 1
2. James Madison (9-4), 3,635 (14); Final 2018 Ranking: 9
3. South Dakota State (10-3), 3,631 (1); Final 2018 Ranking: 3
4. Eastern Washington (12-3), 3,594 (3); Final 2018 Ranking: 2
5. UC Davis (10-3), 3,210; Final 2018 Ranking: 7
6. Jacksonville State (9-4), 3,004; Final 2018 Ranking: 10
7. Maine (10-4), 2,891; Final 2018 Ranking: 4
8. Weber State (10-3), 2,827; Final 2018 Ranking: 6
9. Wofford (10-3), 2,522; Final 2018 Ranking: 13
10. Kennesaw State (11-2), 2,361; Final 2018 Ranking: 5
11. Towson (7-5), 2,330; Final 2018 Ranking: 20
12. Nicholls (9-4), 2,156; Final 2018 Ranking: 14
13. Colgate (10-2), 1,892; Final 2018 Ranking: 8
14. Montana State (8-5), 1,866; Final 2018 Ranking: 17
15. Illinois State (6-5), 1,432; Final 2018 Ranking: NR
16. Indiana State (7-4), 1,192; Final 2018 Ranking: NR
17. Southeast Missouri (9-4), 1,166; Final 2018 Ranking: 15
18. Northern Iowa (7-6), 1,136; Final 2018 Ranking: 23
19. Furman (6-4), 1,074; Final 2018 Ranking: NR
20. North Carolina A&T (10-2), 885; Final 2018 Ranking: 12
21. Elon (6-5), 870; Final 2018 Ranking: 19
22. Delaware (7-5), 798; Final 2018 Ranking: 24
23. Sam Houston State (6-5), 564; Final 2018 Ranking: NR
24. PRINCETON (10-0), 432; FINAL 2018 RANKING: 11
25. Montana (6-5), 413; Final 2018 Ranking: NR
Others Receiving Votes:
26. ETSU (8-4) 323
27. Stony Brook (7-5) 257
28. Duquesne (9-4) 235
29. San Diego (9-3) 209
30. Eastern Kentucky (7-4) 175
31. DARTMOUTH (9-1) 149
32. Central Arkansas (6-5) 125
33. McNeese (6-5) 110
34. Monmouth (8-3) 110
35. UIW (6-5) 108
36. Alcorn State (9-4) 85
37. YALE (5-5) 52
38. New Hampshire (4-7) 42
39. Chattanooga (6-5) 38
40. South Dakota (4-7) 27
41. Northern Arizona (4-6) 16
42. Lamar (7-5) 14
43. Villanova (5-6) 14
44. Richmond (4-7) 8
45. The Citadel (5-6) 7
46. Mercer (5-6) 7
47. Rhode Island (6-5) 7
48. Abilene Christian (6-5) 6
49. Southeastern Louisiana (4-7) 6
50. Idaho State (6-5) 5
51. Youngstown State (4-7) 4
52. Southern (7-4) 3
53. Samford (6-5) 2
54. North Dakota (6-5) 1
55. Sacred Heart (7-4) 1
56. Wagner (4-7) 1
57. Western Illinois (5-6) 1
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A loyal visitor to this digital precinct shared a link to a story about the former Ivy League offensive player of the year from Princeton under the headline, What John Lovett can provide for the Chiefs. That story got me curious about what else people were writing and saying about Lovett and in looking around I stumbled across this from another outlet (LINK):“The first guy that stands out in my mind is Lovett. He’s a guy that’s doing well on offense — he’s catching the ball, he’s learning stuff,” assistant head coach and special teams coordinator, Dave Toub said. “Obviously he’s a smart guy — he went to Princeton — he comes out and he doesn’t make mistakes mentally, and I think he’s got the speed and we’re gonna find out about the toughness when the preseason games come up.”Green Alert Take: That last line cracked me up. We’re gonna find out about the toughness when the preseason games come up. To be sure, while comparing Lovett to players around the NFL there will be questions. But having watched the kid throughout his career his toughness is one thing that cannot be questioned, period, end of sentence.
