A handful of schools have yet to release a 2005 schedule, but we’ve gotten final schedules from Newport News, Ursinus and Gustavus Adolphus over the past week. About half of the schedules still missing are from the NESCAC, which only affects the teams on that little island anyway.
The Gustavus folks say they still might have an announcement soon about adding a tenth game. If so, it might have to be a long trip, or someone from outside Division III, or Crown, or a second game against St. Thomas. Either that or Northwestern is looking to play three games in one day. (For those who missed it, the first-year provisional members are already taking on mighty Trinity Bible and Macalester on the same day, Oct. 8.)
There are some games which we know must exist, but just don’t know for sure when. We assume Rochester and Worcester Polytech will play each other this year, since both are in the Liberty League. Rowan would be expected to play Kean, right?
Millsaps only has eight games at this point. Well, they have nine games listed on their own Web site, but one of the schools on the list, “Concordia (AL)”, doesn’t appear to have varsity football.
One school sent us a schedule that claimed it was playing SUNY-Maritime in its opener this year. Interesting, considering Maritime doesn’t play varsity football until 2006.
Montclair State and Huntingdon are still an opponent short after the Thomas More/PAC fallout. You know, considering that the PAC appears intent on adding more teams — “Long-term, we envision a PAC with 8-10 members … we expect to reach our desired membership level in the near future,” said the leader of the conference’s presidents council — if I were a coach, I’d be very leery about scheduling ANY teams in that conference right now. Who would want to be caught in the next PAC land grab?
And in closing, even though we haven’t asked for them yet, we have received two 2005 season previews. So dig in!
Tell me you don’t feel the same way.