(08-26-2018 12:13 PM)ken d Wrote:  Does the win over Duquesne count toward bowl eligibility for UMass? Seems like their conference only permits 45 football scholarships, which is below the threshhold (90% of the FCS max of 63).

It counts. The way some NEC teams like Duquesne and Wagner are getting around their league's scholarship limit is by changing their accounting so that any financial aid packages offered to football players are counted as scholarship equivalents for NCAA purposes. This was an accommodation made to the Patriot and Ivy League schools that were too pure to be sullied by something as tacky as offering football scholarships instead of "academic aid," but thought they might want to condescend to play a FBS school at some point. The NEC is in a gray area as the only conference that's neither full scholarship nor non-scholarship, so a couple teams that want FBS game money learned to use the rules to their advantage. And because NEC teams have very little chance of getting invited to the FCS playoffs without winning their conference's autobid, they can go ahead and schedule multiple FBS games without any negative consequences if they get blown out. (Duquesne will also be playing Hawaii, which is why they were eligible to schedule a game for Week 0.)