Preseason Poll Consternation and FCS Thoughts

I, and I'm sure many other fans and advocates of the Football Championship Subdivision, frequently find myself defending the FCS from its detractors by submitting that there is, in fact, a great deal of parity in the upper half of the subdivision. Just the other day I had a quick debate with a work client who said off-the-cuff that one NFL prospect on an FCS team would make them more or less a shoo-in for an FCS championship, or at least playoff appearance. Needless to say that to people like you and me this sounds completely ridiculous, but this is the stigma that we as fans of the "lesser" Division-I face and have to consider when interacting with fans of the FBS. This is all leading somewhere, rest assured.

I don't think it's any secret that NDSU is the team to beat in the race to the national title game this coming season, and I think a lot of preseason polls (my own submissions included) are going to reflect that. The Bison return a bevy of starters from a squad that's won ten playoff games in the last three years and boast a BCS-caliber defense. Your average FBS fan would note that the Bison have some legit NFL prospects in guys like Marcus Williams and Billy Turner and cite that that much talent on an FCS team is obviously going to run amok in that subdivision the way NDSU has.

The purpose of this exposition is to establish that even though there is one very dominant team in the FCS now, there is plenty of quality to be found in the top echelon of the FCS. Fans of the subdivision know this, and guys like me get Twitter follows for mashing on it. It's a swell deal.

However, I came to an odd conclusion as I was submitting my AGS.com preseason poll submission when I suddenly found that Georgia Southern, Appalachian State, and Old Dominion weren't eligible for poll nomination as they've all announced intent to move up to the FBS. My top five was pretty solid, but after that I suddenly realized I had no clue who should be going in spots 6-25 (and gods help the folks who submit their 26-35 or beyond spots on some of those submissions). I'm sitting there perusing ESPN and looking over schedules of teams last season and actually almost included three teams from the Patriot League because I flat-out ran out of teams to consider with the exclusion of so many mainstay teams that had qualified success last season. Is that a knock on me for not knowing my teams as well as I probably should? You could make the case. But does it also allude to the coming disparity that's starting to show itself in the FCS with so many teams starting to migrate to the perceived greener pastures of the FBS? Perhaps.

In an ideal league, the top-25 are all fairly competitive with one another. Obviously teams at the top are going to fare better against the teams that are sneaking in to the 20-25 spots, but in the case of the coming season and perhaps beyond, I think we're going to start to see a subdivision where the top five-to-eight teams would just absolutely crush even middling teams in the ten-to-twenty range. My top five ended up looking like this:

1. North Dakota State
2. Sam Houston State
3. Eastern Washington
4. Montana State
5. Illinois State

Right there are three teams that would be supplanted by the aforementioned FCS departed, and three teams that would help build a demonstrable bridge between the top echelon and the middle-of-the-road teams in the FCS. Suddenly now we're including a team like Illinois State, who I think will be good-not-great, and two Big Sky teams that will probably go 6-2 or 7-1 in conference play but then get smacked as their penance for not playing defense (although EWU does have one of the top DB prospects in all of college football as a transfer from UCLA in Tevin McDonald). It makes for a poll that will probably stay fairly consistent at the top (though my Illinois State prediction here is probably going to go all over the place) and get shaken up every single week in reasonably dramatic fashion.  I'm certainly making no assertions that my poll is "right" and preseason polls are, of course, a massive crapshoot as you can't factor in the months without games that teams have used to either progress or regress, so maybe this entire post will be rendered moot when twenty legit teams are starting to form a meniscus-like barrier in the subdivision.

In any event, it's almost a little unsettling to start to see the divide emerging in the FCS not unlike that which came about in the twilight years of Division-II, a yawing gulf that prompted NDSU, Northern Colorado, North Dakota, and a whole bunch of other schools to try their luck in Division-I. Obviously for some like NDSU, that move worked out pretty well. Other schools like Northern Colorado haven't had a whole lot of success, and for fans it's probably tough to rationalize the move up when your team(s) are having the kind of year-in, year-out struggles that the Bears are having. Is this some manner of dark precursor to an en-masse FBS move up as those FCS teams with the finances to do it are forced to jump the FCS ship and crowd the FBS? What kind of ramifications will that have on the teams themselves, their financial and athletic futures, and the ever-depleting FCS? It's a sobering scenario, and one that will be interesting to watch unfold over the next season or two as we adjust to life without a few of the FCS mainstays that are now leaving.

I'll post the rest of my poll when AGS gets their submissions out and will break down the official poll when it comes out as it's pertinent to the MVFC. Should be a good five or six teams that make the cut, by my reckoning.

UPDATE: Here's the poll, feel free to tear it apart because it's not great - that's the joy of doing preseason polls. This will certainly look way different after week one.

1: North Dakota State Bison
2: Sam Houston State Bearkats
3: Eastern Washington Eagles
4: Montana State Bobcats
5: Illinois State Redbirds
6: Villanova Wildcats
7: Montana Grizzlies
8: Stony Brook Seawolves
9: Wofford Terriers
10: Cal Poly Mustangs
11: Central Arkansas Bears
12: James Madison Dukes
13: South Dakota State Jackrabbits
14: Richmond Spiders
15: The Citadel Bulldogs
16: Towson Tigers
17: Murray State Racers
18: Delaware Fightin' Blue Hens
19: Colgate Raiders
20: McNeese State Cowboys
21: Chattanooga Mocs
22: Northern Iowa Panthers
23: Lehigh Mountain Hawks
24: Eastern Illinois Panthers
25: Southern Illinois Salukis