That's A Wrap

With the season finished and South Dakota State wrapping up its second consecutive championship, the FCS Top-25 polls have been updated and finalized. Two of the three Ivy League champions were in the "Others Receiving Votes" category with Dartmouth on the outside looking in.

Of note, Patriot League champion Lafayette, which went 9-3 while posting its first full-season winning record since 2009, was 19th in the FCS Coaches Poll and 21st in the Stats Perform Poll. Old friend Holy Cross of the Patriot League was 25th in the Coaches Poll and ranked 30th per Stats.

	Stats Perform	W-L	Pts	Prev
1	South Dakota State (56)	15-0	1,400	1
2	Montana	13-2	1,343	2
3	North Dakota State	11-4	1,252	8
4	South Dakota	10-3	1,140	3
5	Albany	11-4	1,125	9
6	Villanova	10-3	1,105	6
7	Furman	10-3	1,085	7
8	Idaho	9-4	1,067	4
9	Montana State	8-4	992	5
10	Delaware	9-4	790	11
11	Florida A&M	12-1	777	10
12	Southern Illinois	8-5	754	14
13	Sacramento State	8-5	748	15
14	Chattanooga	8-5	594	18
15	Richmond	9-4	573	22
16	North Dakota	7-5	542	12
17	Mercer	9-4	525	17
18	Austin Peay	9-3	458	13
19	Youngstown State	8-5	454	21
20	North Carolina Central	9-3	339	16
21	Lafayette	9-3	280	20
22	UIW	8-2	210	19
23	Western Carolina	7-4	117	23
24	UC Davis	7-4	107	25
25	UT Martin	8-3	103	24
	Others Receiving Votes (on two or more ballots):  Gardner-Webb 60, Tarleton 52, Nicholls 45, Northern Iowa 41, Holy Cross 35, Drake 21, Harvard 18, Central Arkansas 17, Eastern Illinois 16, Duquesne 10, Yale 4.

	FCS Coaches	W-L	Pts	Prev
1	South Dakota State (23)	15-0	575	1
2	Montana	13-2	552	2
3	North Dakota State	11-4	513	7
T-4	Idaho	9-4	448	4
T-4	South Dakota	10-3	448	3
6	Furman	10-3	447	6
7	Albany	11-4	429	15
8	Montana State	8-4	411	8
9	Villanova	10-3	407	9
10	Florida A&M	12-1	400	5
11	Delaware	9-4	278	12
12	Austin Peay	9-3	264	10
13	Southern Illinois	8-5	258	17
14	UIW	9-2	254	11
15	Sacramento State	8-5	238	16
16	North Dakota	7-5	223	14
17	Chattanooga	8-5	203	19
18	North Carolina Central	9-3	185	13
19	Lafayette	9-3	178	18
20	Mercer	9-4	175	20
21	Youngstown State	8-5	138	23
22	Richmond	9-4	130	25
23	UT Martin	8-3	100	21
24	Eastern Illinois	8-3	65	24
25	Holy Cross	7-4	56	22
	Others Receiving Votes: UC Davis, 28; Harvard, 14; Gardner-Webb, 11; Tarleton, 8; Central Arkansas, 7; Nicholls, 7; Western Carolina, 7; Illinois St., 6; Yale, 4; William & Mary, 3; Rhode Island, 2; Samford, 2; Bryant, 1.

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Columbia, which has trawled the FBS ranks for transfer quarterbacks more than any other Ivy in recent years, is bringing in Cole Freeman, a 6-foot, 210-pound junior from Northwestern per his Xwitter. (LINK)

Originally a Brown commit in 2021 per NJVarsity, he started two games and played in three for the Big Ten Wildcats in 2022, going 22-for-45 through the air (48.9 percent) for 178 yards with five interceptions. He was listed with 18 rushes for 66 yards. He did not appear in any games last fall.

Also offered by Monmouth out of New Jersey's Delbarton School, he took recruiting visits as a high school senior to Rutgers, Syracuse and Wake Forest before ending up in Evanston. Find his Northwestern bio HERE.

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WCAX TV out of Burlington, Vt., has a piece about the Buddy Teevens Award posted on BGA Daily yesterday HERE.

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Still on the subject of transfers, Clifton McDowell, the starting quarterback for Montana in FCS championship game on Sunday, has entered the portal after one season with the Griz. His next stop will be the fifth in his college journey. He spent two seasons in Louisiana with Lafayette's Ragin' Cajuns, then moved on to Kilgore College, Central Arkansas and then Montana.

Green Alert Take: The transfer portal is pure madness.

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Meant to post this on Monday after seeing that you could spend more for a beer at the Michigan-Washington game than I did for a ticket to  the 1979 national championship Sugar Bowl game between Penn State and Alabama. Here's my old ticket:

OK, it was a l-o-n-g time ago (not that the pain of the 14-7 loss by No. 1 Penn State loss has ever completely gone away) but my ticket to the game was $15 including tax. As a writer noted earlier this week, there were beers going for more than that on Monday night. Heck, a bottle of water was $6.95. (LINK)

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EXTRA POINT
I took our outside Christmas lights down a few days ago and let it be known I do not look forward to pulling them out and untangling them next December. Mrs. BGA took care of the inside lights because I'd buy new ones every year rather than deal with the ridiculous bird's nest of wires and tiny bulbs that would greet us in 11 months if I put them away.

Kudos to Mrs. BGA for being careful and making them as trouble-free as possible for next December but the award for the most careful and neat storage of Christmas lights was retired years ago by her mother-in-law. To this day I have no idea how she did it, but she was a true artist when it came to putting those things away.