Trivia: Was UR the 1st team ever to

[BDKJMU]

Not finish in the top 2 in their conference regular season but go on to win the NC?

I know some teams that finished 2nd in their conference during the regular season have gone on to win the NC. I would count JMU among them as in 04' both JMU & W&M finished 7-1, but since W&M won head to head during the regular season they were 1st place.

[FCS_pwns_FBS]

Nope. Youngstown State, 1997 was probably the first.

[Tribe4SF]

Not finish in the top 2 in their conference regular season but go on to win the NC?

I know some teams that finished 2nd in their conference during the regular season have gone on to win the NC. I would count JMU among them as in 04' both JMU & W&M finished 7-1, but since W&M won head to head during the regular season they were 1st place.


W&M, JMU and Delaware all tied for the championship in '04. Head-to-head did not settle it because each had a loss to the other two. Each also had the same record against common opponents. W&M got the autobid on overall Div. I record because they did not play a D-II, while JMU and UD did.

[AppAlum2003]

Isn't this exactly why we have a playoff? Congrats UR!

[ChickenMan]

UMass finished third in the A10 in '98.. behind both Richmond and UConn before winning the I-AA title that same year.

[BDKJMU]

Nope. Youngstown State, 1997 was probably the first.

YSU finished 3rd or lower in the Gateway in 97?

[BDKJMU]

UMass finished third in the A10 in '98.. behind both Richmond and UConn before winning the I-AA title that same year.

Ok, if the other poster was correct about YSU, then so far that would be 3 in 31 playoffs:
YSU 97'
UMass 98'
UR 08'

[UMass922]

UMass finished third in the A-10 in 1998 (behind Richmond and UConn, I believe; UMass had the same record as UConn, but lost the head-to-head).

[UMass922]

UMass finished third in the A10 in '98.. behind both Richmond and UConn before winning the I-AA title that same year.

Beat me to it. Interestingly, UMass lost to UConn twice that year in the regular season--once in an A-10 game, and once in (what was technically) an OOC game that was scheduled to make up for BU having dropped out. It's got to be one of the very few times in the modern era that two teams have played each other twice in the regular season. It was kind of cool, actually.

I'm sure you remember who UMass's only other loss came against that year . . .

[th0m]

That is fairly interesting. Although with the championship games in the Big XII, SEC, and ACC, I guess it's quite possible to have rematches in the regular season, I'm sure that has occurred recently (too lazy to research that ;))

[UMass922]

That is fairly interesting. Although with the championship games in the Big XII, SEC, and ACC, I guess it's quite possible to have rematches in the regular season, I'm sure that has occurred recently (too lazy to research that ;))

Yeah, conference championships do produce rematches (can't think of any off the top of my head, but I'm sure it's happened at least a few times), but I think of those as post-season games (of a sort). I'm thinking of this in terms of games scheduled prior to the season.

Incidentally, UConn and UMass could have met a third time that year--it would have been in Chattanooga. UConn lost to GSU in the quarters, though. (That was in the days of 1-16 seeding. If it happened today, with regionalization, UMass and UConn very well might have been slated for a second-round matchup.)

[HiHiYikas]

I don't know about third-place finishes, but it seems like a good number of recent title-game teams have 2 or more conference/FCS losses. Just goes to show that being undefeated in the regular season doesn't automatically mean a team ought to be the champion.

Two SoCon losses should have put ASU in at least second place last season (it would have been third a lot of years) Last year was funny, though - only twice in the history of the SoCon has a team with 2 conference losses won the conference title.

[UNIFanSince1983]

Yeah Youngstown was 3rd in the Gateway behind UNI and Western. Funny thing is UNI had one conference loss that season finished ahead of Youngstown (and beat them head-to-head) that year. Youngstown went on to win the championship while UNI was completely left out of the playoffs. I mean we were 7-4 that year and YSU's only losses were to Western and UNI.

[roberb7]

Yeah, conference championships do produce rematches (can't think of any off the top of my head,

I can. Virginia Tech and Boston College have met four times in the last two seasons.

[ViennaSpider]

I'm sure you remember who UMass's only other loss came against that year . . .

Delaware, 30-33.

[henfan]

UR was not the first but the second private institution to win the I-AA/FCS national championship. Of course the '88 Furman team was the other.

Pretty impressive feat.xthumbsupx