Hero Sports' SoCon Preview

[SU DOG]

Article today by Brian McLaughlin:

https://herosports.com/fcs/football-2018-southern-conference-preview-preseason-ajaj

[FUBeAR]

Article today by Brian McLaughlin:

https://herosports.com/fcs/football-2018-southern-conference-preview-preseason-ajaj

I think Brian is starting to channel his inner FUBeAR...

"This is clearly the best looking SoCon since App State and Georgia Southern moved "up" to being forgotten in the FBS, fighting for those well-attended bowl game slots against MAC schools (instead of winning national titles in the FCS)."

If he uses the phrase "Road to Irrelevance," I will be on the phone with my Intellectual Property Attorney forthwith!

Also...
"TOP TACKLER: Ahmad Gooden (https://herosports.com/colleges/team-player-stats/ahmad-gooden), Samford (https://herosports.com/colleges/samford)​​
He finished with 11 tackles last season, along with 5.5 sacks."

Nice Sack/Tackles ratio, but less than 1 tackle/game isn't going to get him that Buchanan Award.


Like his logic though...

RANKING THE SOCON



RK
HERO SPORTS


1
Samford


2
Mercer


3
Furman


4
Wofford


5
West. Carolina


6
The Citadel


7
Chattanooga


8
ETSU


9
VMI



With his #1 & his #2 matching up in less than a month, we oughta get some sense of his prognostication competency by dinner time on 9/15.

Both Teams, most likely, will come into that game 1-1 and, most likely, not really knowing much about how good they really are or aren't. Could be very interesting. The last time the Bears played in B'ham they were a significant underdog, as they probably will be again. The Bears played the bullpups with no RB's (essentially) and the QB had 40 carries...and just missed completing the game winning pass in the final seconds by about an inch over the wide-open TE's outstretched hand. Yep - could be VERY INTERESTING!

Dangit...I'm talking myself into making that drive over to B'ham again...we'll see.

[smallcollegefbfan]

I think Brian is starting to channel his inner FUBeAR...

"This is clearly the best looking SoCon since App State and Georgia Southern moved "up" to being forgotten in the FBS, fighting for those well-attended bowl game slots against MAC schools (instead of winning national titles in the FCS)."

If he uses the phrase "Road to Irrelevance," I will be on the phone with my Intellectual Property Attorney forthwith!

Also...
"TOP TACKLER: Ahmad Gooden (https://herosports.com/colleges/team-player-stats/ahmad-gooden), Samford (https://herosports.com/colleges/samford)​​
He finished with 11 tackles last season, along with 5.5 sacks."

Nice Sack/Tackles ratio, but less than 1 tackle/game isn't going to get him that Buchanan Award.


Like his logic though...

RANKING THE SOCON



RK
HERO SPORTS


1
Samford


2
Mercer


3
Furman


4
Wofford


5
West. Carolina


6
The Citadel


7
Chattanooga


8
ETSU


9
VMI



With his #1 & his #2 matching up in less than a month, we oughta get some sense of his prognostication competency by dinner time on 9/15.

Both Teams, most likely, will come into that game 1-1 and, most likely, not really knowing much about how good they really are or aren't. Could be very interesting. The last time the Bears played in B'ham they were a significant underdog, as they probably will be again. The Bears played the bullpups with no RB's (essentially) and the QB had 40 carries...and just missed completing the game winning pass in the final seconds by about an inch over the wide-open TE's outstretched hand. Yep - could be VERY INTERESTING!

Dangit...I'm talking myself into making that drive over to B'ham again...we'll see.


A couple points

1. Gooden had 101 tackles last year. Really bad error there. Gooden had 11 tackles against Wofford alone.

2. He had no reason to take a jab at App and GSU. App is a SBC contender and both schools are getting much beter players and playing bigger programs at home than they would in FCS. 95% of college football fans and even 80% of FCS fans don't care about FCS past going to the game to tailgate. Being in FCS makes a team a forgotten program but in FBS everyone knows who you are. Look at some of the teams going to App and GSU and the others who moved up. None of those teams would play at those schools if they were still FCS.

I think FCS is a very good brand of football but the SoCon is clearly not the same as it was when Marshall, App, and GSU were in the league. The talent is not as good and the SoCon was once possibly the best league in FCS and now probably 3rd or 4th best.

There were years in the 1990s where the SoCon had 3, 4, or even 5 players drafted by the NFL. In 2016, 2017, and 2018 there was just 1 taken per year. Only 4 signed and 6 had tryouts in 2018. Just 11 getting a shot is very low when there were years that 15-20 got a shot back then with less players going to training camps back then.

[FUBeAR]

A couple points

1. Gooden had 101 tackles last year. Really bad error there. Gooden had 11 tackles against Wofford alone.

2. He had no reason to take a jab at App and GSU. App is a SBC contender and both schools are getting much beter players and playing bigger programs at home than they would in FCS. 95% of college football fans and even 80% of FCS fans don't care about FCS past going to the game to tailgate. Being in FCS makes a team a forgotten program but in FBS everyone knows who you are. Look at some of the teams going to App and GSU and the others who moved up. None of those teams would play at those schools if they were still FCS.

I think FCS is a very good brand of football but the SoCon is clearly not the same as it was when Marshall, App, and GSU were in the league. The talent is not as good and the SoCon was once possibly the best league in FCS and now probably 3rd or 4th best.

1) I know. It was a joke. I alerted Brian to the typo & it has been corrected to 101.

2) Blah, blah, blah - no one here cares at all & no one, nationally, (really) cares any more about Appy, GaSou, or Marsha than they do about NDSU, JMU, or Sacred Heart, despite the delusions of those that ache for it to be so.

3) You probably couldn’t type quite as well after someone cut both of your arms off either...until they grew back after a few years. SoCon has regrown down to below the elbows at this point & is still growing...and, though always recently ranked behind the MVFC, has been ranked #2 or #3 (swapping back & forth with the CAA) in the past 4 or 5 years - at the end of the season. For some insane reason, the Big Lie Conference always moves ahead of the SoCon in the off season...until 5 of their 6 At-Large Teams soil their linens in the Playoffs. No one thought that this resurgence of the SoCon so quickly would be even close to possible. In fact, most Appy & GaSou Fans just couldn’t fathom how the SoCon could even survive without their ‘glorious presence.’ I saw many of them laying out elaborate plans of how the SoCon schools would be dispersed into the Big South, OVC, and PFL once they had departed. Um...not exactly. And, no, the SoCon is certainly not the same. The SoCon no longer has to suffer with 1 rogue program & 2 constantly whining malcontents. BIG improvement!

4) How many future NFL Players were on Furman’s National Championship Team in 1988? How about on Furman’s National Runner-Up Team in 2001? Personally, I don’t care if the SoCon NEVER puts another Player in the NFL. Graduating Student Athletes AND winning NCAA (or NAIA, if scheduled) Football games is all that matters to me in this context.

[smallcollegefbfan]

1) I know. It was a joke. I alerted Brian to the typo & it has been corrected to 101.

2) Blah, blah, blah - no one here cares at all & no one, nationally, (really) cares any more about Appy, GaSou, or Marsha than they do about NDSU, JMU, or Sacred Heart, despite the delusions of those that ache for it to be so.

3) You probably couldn’t type quite as well after someone cut both of your arms off either...until they grew back after a few years. SoCon has regrown down to below the elbows at this point & is still growing...and, though always recently ranked behind the MVFC, has been ranked #2 or #3 (swapping back & forth with the CAA) in the past 4 or 5 years - at the end of the season. For some insane reason, the Big Lie Conference always moves ahead of the SoCon in the off season...until 5 of their 6 At-Large Teams soil their linens in the Playoffs. No one thought that this resurgence of the SoCon so quickly would be even close to possible. In fact, most Appy & GaSou Fans just couldn’t fathom how the SoCon could even survive without their ‘glorious presence.’ I saw many of them laying out elaborate plans of how the SoCon schools would be dispersed into the Big South, OVC, and PFL once they had departed. Um...not exactly. And, no, the SoCon is certainly not the same. The SoCon no longer has to suffer with 1 rogue program & 2 constantly whining malcontents. BIG improvement!

4) How many future NFL Players were on Furman’s National Championship Team in 1988? How about on Furman’s National Runner-Up Team in 2001? Personally, I don’t care if the SoCon NEVER puts another Player in the NFL. Graduating Student Athletes AND winning NCAA (or NAIA, if scheduled) Football games is all that matters to me in this context.

1. Still a bad typo.

2. You are right because nationally people consider the G5 schools to be small schools and FCS schools are D2 to most fans. I'm just saying that the level of play was way better back in the day. SoCon was king of I-AA and now it is good but nowhere near the king they once were.

3. When you are a FCS fan you should know that 99.5% of the players your team will bring in will never even get a shot in the NFL but my point was that those teams did not leave to go be obscure and the level of play in say SBC is what the SoCon was in the 90s and now the top of SoCon is about the mid to bottom tier of what it was at one time. It feels like from a scouting standpoint the Midwest is a much better level of play overall than the southeast and the southeast use to be where I felt I would see the best FCS and D2 prospects. D2 is nowhere near as good as it once was in the southeast as well. The SAC has taken a hit with the loss of so many SoCon schools so now you see many players who would typically go to the SAC now playing in the SoCon.

4. SoCon once had the Big 3 as GSU, Furman, and App were always in the playoffs and when Marshall was there you had 4 power programs. Back in 1996 the league had 4 teams finish in the top 25 and another receiving votes. They had 2 in the final top 10. In 1999 they had 4 top 25 teams and a 5th team receiving votes highly. Last year the SoCon had 3 ranked and just 1 in the top 15.

HBCU schools have taken a hit as well because back then you would see 2-3 of them ranked all the time and even finish in the top 10 and now it is much harder for them to finish that high. They pretty much have to go undefeated. FAMU had 2 losses and Jackson had 1 yet they were both top 15 programs.

If I'm you I would certainly not care if my guys go to the NFL but your coaches certainly do. It helps in recruiting when a player is picking schools. They often want to go to a small school where they feel they may have a shot at the NFL. A place where they can develop and win national titles. Right now in the SoCon if I'm a top tier FCS recruit the only places I feel that way about are Samford, Chattanooga, and Western Carolina. There was a time when all those programs were bottom level OVC and SoCon teams. Now they are the top dogs. That's my point.

Since the 1990s the FCS level has lost a lot of teams. While Idaho has left and returned the following teams are gone (note how many are top level G5 schools who are ranked or RV in FBS now): Central Florida (top 10 finish in 2017), Marshall, South Florida, App State, Georgia Southern, Texas State, UMASS, Troy, Hofstra now defunct and they had many good years, UCONN, CCU has come and gone since early 2000s, Middle Tenn St, Western Kentucky, Boston U is defunct, NE Louisiana, Liberty, Charlotte and Georgia State formed and moved up, and Cal St Northridge is not defunct. I counted 19 that were top 25 caliber programs back in the 90s or when they were FCS and 11 of the 19 come from the southeast with only 1 from west of Texas.

[Catamount87]

UNC-Charlotte, now that's a joke of a football program. They sucked as an FCS independent and suck as an FBS program. I doubt they'll ever be much when it comes to football. Shoot I doubt they'll schedule any games against decent FCS teams given they were beaten by NC A&T last year.

[smallcollegefbfan]

UNC-Charlotte, now that's a joke of a football program. They sucked as an FCS independent and suck as an FBS program. I doubt they'll ever be much when it comes to football. Shoot I doubt they'll schedule any games against decent FCS teams given they were beaten by NC A&T last year.

You would think Charlotte would be much better but they have been awful. I included them because that's another 85 scholarships that are taken away from FCS. They do have at least 5-7 players who would be stars in the FCS though.

[PaladinFan]

UNC-Charlotte, now that's a joke of a football program. They sucked as an FCS independent and suck as an FBS program. I doubt they'll ever be much when it comes to football. Shoot I doubt they'll schedule any games against decent FCS teams given they were beaten by NC A&T last year.

There are a number of FBS programs I don't think hold a candle to most of the SoCon.

I've done this exercise before, but you now have a complete oversaturation of D1 football programs. I can all but guarantee you that there are players on current SBC, SoCon, and OVC programs that weren't even D1 players 15 years ago. It makes sense that there is a perception that the competition isn't as good.

I personally think the SoCon has been in a deep transition (which we all expected) since App and GSU left. This year and next year should really be test cases for whether the SoCon is really back nationally. I don't know how good Furman will be this year, but I know they'll return nearly everyone next year.

[FUBeAR]

They often want to go to a small school where they feel they may have a shot at the NFL. A place where they can develop and win national titles. Right now in the SoCon if I'm a top tier FCS recruit the only places I feel that way about are Samford, Chattanooga, and Western Carolina.

Well...this will sound like I’m arguing against the point I’m making, but when I read the bolded lines above, I have to completely discount everything else you’ve said.

Western Carolina hasn’t even made the Playoffs in 35 years.
Samford hasn’t won a Playoff game in almost 30 years.
Chattanooga was 3-5 in the SoCon last year.

All 3 do have a good shot at making the Playoffs & making some noise there this year, I agree with that...

...but so do Wofford & Furman, who have both won multiple Playoff games in the past 5 years. Also, The Citadel, which has been in the Playoffs 2x and won a game there in that time same frame. And, this year, their 1st year with 5 year scholarship players on the roster (11 of them), Mercer may be, overall, as talented as any of those 6.

In your version of the SoCon ‘glory days,’ could you ever say that about 7 Teams?

And, it just may be 8. We’ll have to see what the new HC at ETSU can do with a very experienced & (possibly) very talented Team.

So, if you’re a Recruit & you’ve ID’d those 3 programs as the “only” places in the SoCon where you “can win national titles,” you, my friend, are headed straight to JUCO, cuz there ain’t no way you’re qualifying to get into ANY SoCon, or other 4-year, College or University.