 It could take a while for Chapman to be seen as a real Top 25 candidate. Chapman athletics photo |
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North Park was one of the biggest stories on Saturday night, but there were plenty of other surprises of a different kind. Not teams that broke long streaks or look like they might soon, but some surprise unbeaten teams. That’s teams such as Hartwick, Gallaudet, Olivet, Greenville, Millsaps, Lake Forest, Pacific and others listed in the tags at the bottom of the page. None of those are in the Top 25, and most fans understand why, but if you don’t, we’ll discuss why, whether those teams have a shot to do so and what it would take for voters to do so. (Gallaudet portion transcribed in the comments section.)
Plus the ODAC got more ODACky, the USA South did its thing, sort of, the NESCAC is far enough along for us to talk about and more.
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The tags below include the schools we talked about. Also, we’re bringing back your first look at the Postgame Show, with your D3reports and team interviews and highlight packages:
The Gallaudet portion, transcribed:
Keith: “(from talking about Greenville) … but there aren’t too many more teams on this list where as we get further down the season, six, seven eight wins and they’re still undefeated, where they wouldn’t get any consideration at all.”
Pat: “For example, let’s talk about Gallaudet. Gallaudet at 4-0, have beaten Shenandoah and now beating Shenandoah looks a heck of a lot more interesting this week after Shenandoah beat Bridgewater. They have a big win against Rocehster by more than three touchdowns, went up to Mount Ida and won 7-6. So that means that they’ve played the best team on the schedule, whether you think that’s Shenandoah or Rochester. They’ve played one of the best teams in the conference and they have the other one coming to their place next week. Gallaudet’s Top 25 resume looks about as good as it’s going to look all season and I look at them beating Mount Ida 7-6 and I think of what a very strong Top 25 team did to Mount Ida in the playoffs last year.”
Keith: “Yeah, the Wesley score, which was maybe 61-12, I’m going off the top of the head here, or 56-6 [actually 73-14]. It’s true that the ECFC doesn’t play Top 25-caliber football right now at this point. But Gallaudet, or Gallaudet — I’m going to start pronouncing it right since you used to work there, you must know how to pronounce it. I’ll take the “you” out of it.”
Pat: “There you go.”
Keith: “They’ve beaten teams from legitimate conferences in winning at Shenandoah, beating Rochester, and those teams have gone on to beat other good teams, so I think maybe there’s some argument for Gallaudet to get consideration, but you’re right, it’s not going to help them later on in the season. If they beat Husson, they beat Becker, they beat Anna Maria, that’s not going to catch anyone’s eyes. The thing that’s interesting to me about the Bison is their, just by being a member of this conference, they have to go up to Boston, a couple weeks later they go up to Castleon State in the northern part of Vermont. They play a team from Maine but luckily they come down to D.C. this year. They go up to Massachusetts and they have to go up to New York. So it’s one of those — on the east coast, this is different if you’re on the west coast in D-III or if you’re in Texas or in the deep south and used to having these long road trips. East coast trips are usually one state or contiguous states and the road trips are mostly bus trips. You don’t see teams having to make these 10- and 11-hour trips week after week very often and the Bison have to do it by virtue of the league they chose to be in and that makes their schedule slightly more impressive. It doesn’t make it Top 25-worthy, but it is a neat little factoid.”
Pat: “And it turn it gives them at least the opportunity to make the playoffs and the chance to qualify via the automatic bid whereas if they had, not that they had been offered membership in any of these conferences, but if they had been in a conference that’s more local such as the MAC, or the ODAC or something like that they would have a much more difficult chance of making the playoffs. And for Gallaudet, again, to be 4-0, to be in the position that they’re in compared to where they were when they took their program back from club into Division III status six or seven years ago, is pretty impressive. And this is a program that has gone back and forth from club to intercollegiate a couple times over the past couple decades and have not had a lot of success until finding themselves a home in the ECFC where it’s a lot easier to get a program back on its feet and that’s clearly what Gallaudet is trying to do. That kind of gets us through the couple of schools that don’t have a clear path to the Top 25. (Conversation continues regarding Ithaca and others …)”
You guys are good. Truly appreciate what you do each week.
I feel the pain for the players of Merchant Marine! Not fair for those kids.