Despite the win today, the Tribe may still fall in the rankings due to the meh nature of our win and several more impressive wins by teams below us in the poll:

#8 Sacramento State (3-0) beat Stanford 30-23.
#5 Idaho (2-1) lost 30-17 at California.
#6 Holy Cross (2-1) won at Yale 49-24.
#7 Furman (2-1) won at Kennesaw State 31-24.

Also #12 Montana (3-0) beat 2-time Div-II Champion Ferris State 17-10.

My personal opinion is that a team that wins should not drop in the poll ....but accumulate too many meh wins in a row and any team should expect to drop if teams below them are really excelling.

Plus, we all know how the pollsters love the Big Sky and MVFC and don't seem to respect the CAA.........So we shall see..........

(09-16-2023 10:55 PM)Zorch Wrote:  Despite the win today, the Tribe may still fall in the rankings due to the meh nature of our win and several more impressive wins by teams below us in the poll…

Plus, we all know how the pollsters love the Big Sky and MVFC and don't seem to respect the CAA.........So we shall see..........

In one of our few chances to give non-Flo subscribers reason to respect W&M - and the CAA - we didn’t capitalize on the opportunity. Even our outstanding defensive effort can’t overcome the sputtering offense and complete lack of discipline at the end. And yes, I saw where a CS player spit on Poole, but we HAVE to be better than our opponent. They baited our guys into a situation where we’ll likely be without key players for the first half vs Maine. Now we’re probably going to see more of this crap from our opponents the rest of the season. We have to do better.

Honestly... I feel like Zorch you're not being objective. If someone in front of us was performing like we were in the polls, I suspect you'd be calling for us passing them.

IMO, we absolutely deserve to slide in the polls. The polls are meant to measure the quality of the teams. A team that is barely beating teams that a top 5-10 team should demolish while other teams are performing better SHOULD move down.

I'm not saying we deserve to drop out of the polls or anything crazy like that, but the team performance we've seen probably should slide a little. The "teams can't move down when they win" attitude is what is wrong with polling imo - and what hurt us last year.

(09-16-2023 10:55 PM)Zorch Wrote:  ...My personal opinion is that a team that wins should not drop in the poll ....but accumulate too many meh wins in a row and any team should expect to drop if teams below them are really excelling.

(09-17-2023 10:30 AM)wml33t Wrote:  Honestly... I feel like Zorch you're not being objective. If someone in front of us was performing like we were in the polls, I suspect you'd be calling for us passing them.

IMO, we absolutely deserve to slide in the polls. The polls are meant to measure the quality of the teams. A team that is barely beating teams that a top 5-10 team should demolish while other teams are performing better SHOULD move down.

I'm not saying we deserve to drop out of the polls or anything crazy like that, but the team performance we've seen probably should slide a little. The "teams can't move down when they win" attitude is what is wrong with polling imo - and what hurt us last year.

I did say that if we accumulate too many meh wins in a row that we would deserve to drop. I just don't think that one in a row constitutes too many. (Or perhaps some folks think that it is two if we count Wofford).

The other side of the coin to your argument is that dropping after a win or even if the score is not a blowout encourages teams to schedule bad opponents (hmm, like Charleston Southern?) and to run up the score. Does Montana State actually deserve more credit because they demolished Stetson at home vice W&M winning on the road but not as impressively as we had all expected?

Yes. Yes they do.

(09-17-2023 01:35 PM)Tribester Wrote:  Yes. Yes they do.

What Tribester said.


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You won't fall in the poll without a loss. That's an unwritten rule followed by voters that Brian McLaughlin has mentioned.

Two caveats:
1) you could be leapfrogged if a slot above you opens up due to a loss.
2) playoff seeding can look very different than poll results. FCS committee is not bound by the poll, and often deviates from that for the top seeds.

(09-16-2023 10:55 PM)Zorch Wrote:  Despite the win today, the Tribe may still fall in the rankings due to the meh nature of our win and several more impressive wins by teams below us in the poll:

#8 Sacramento State (3-0) beat Stanford 30-23.
#5 Idaho (2-1) lost 30-17 at California.
#6 Holy Cross (2-1) won at Yale 49-24.
#7 Furman (2-1) won at Kennesaw State 31-24.

Also #12 Montana (3-0) beat 2-time Div-II Champion Ferris State 17-10.

My personal opinion is that a team that wins should not drop in the poll ....but accumulate too many meh wins in a row and any team should expect to drop if teams below them are really excelling.

Plus, we all know how the pollsters love the Big Sky and MVFC and don't seem to respect the CAA.........So we shall see..........

Based on these facts the likelihood of us slipping below #4 is good. We will know tomorrow


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Teams don't usually drop in polls with a win because pollsters recognize that they're not paying close attention to circumstances, like that we had two OL out sick or some other kind of thing. That said, I could see Sac State moving up and us moving down as a result of them playing into a better ranking. At the least I would expect Sac St to be #5.

(09-17-2023 05:08 PM)WMInTheBurg Wrote:  Teams don't usually drop in polls with a win because pollsters recognize that they're not paying close attention to circumstances, like that we had two OL out sick or some other kind of thing. That said, I could see Sac State moving up and us moving down as a result of them playing into a better ranking. At the least I would expect Sac St to be #5.

Sac State earned and deserves #4 IMO

Massey Composite Index dropped us 3 slots from #7 to #10


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(09-17-2023 05:08 PM)WMInTheBurg Wrote:  Teams don't usually drop in polls with a win because pollsters recognize that they're not paying close attention to circumstances, like that we had two OL out sick or some other kind of thing. That said, I could see Sac State moving up and us moving down as a result of them playing into a better ranking. At the least I would expect Sac St to be #5.

One STATS poll voter dropped WM from 4 to 9. Reasoning?

“UIW also ended up jumping W&M in the Top 10. UIW made it through a good road test at ACU, who was a 7-win team last year. W&M squeaked by a competitive but overall struggling Charleston Southern program.”

https://herosports.com/fcs-top-25-sam-he...2023-bzbz/

(09-18-2023 07:34 AM)ScottyB757 Wrote:  

(09-17-2023 05:08 PM)WMInTheBurg Wrote:  Teams don't usually drop in polls with a win because pollsters recognize that they're not paying close attention to circumstances, like that we had two OL out sick or some other kind of thing. That said, I could see Sac State moving up and us moving down as a result of them playing into a better ranking. At the least I would expect Sac St to be #5.

One STATS poll voter dropped WM from 4 to 9. Reasoning?

“UIW also ended up jumping W&M in the Top 10. UIW made it through a good road test at ACU, who was a 7-win team last year. W&M squeaked by a competitive but overall struggling Charleston Southern program.”

https://herosports.com/fcs-top-25-sam-he...2023-bzbz/

Mr. Herder did not have us at #4 at any time, the Tribe was 7th in his poll last week. I don't think the Tribe looks like a top 15 team so far. But, there are still plenty of chances to look better. One problem again though is other than the UVA game, no one will see us play. Even if the Tribe runs the table(outside of a loss to UVA??), the only two chances to see them were against Charleston Southern and then against UVA. To be fair, I am still surprised that they only scored 15 points when gaining that many yards.

(09-18-2023 07:34 AM)ScottyB757 Wrote:  

(09-17-2023 05:08 PM)WMInTheBurg Wrote:  Teams don't usually drop in polls with a win because pollsters recognize that they're not paying close attention to circumstances, like that we had two OL out sick or some other kind of thing. That said, I could see Sac State moving up and us moving down as a result of them playing into a better ranking. At the least I would expect Sac St to be #5.

One STATS poll voter dropped WM from 4 to 9. Reasoning?

“UIW also ended up jumping W&M in the Top 10. UIW made it through a good road test at ACU, who was a 7-win team last year. W&M squeaked by a competitive but overall struggling Charleston Southern program.”

https://herosports.com/fcs-top-25-sam-he...2023-bzbz/

Well, I had the "they're not paying close attention to circumstances" right...

(09-17-2023 11:50 AM)Zorch Wrote:  ...Does Montana State actually deserve more credit because they demolished Stetson at home vice W&M winning on the road but not as impressively as we had all expected?

(09-17-2023 03:53 PM)wml33t Wrote:  

(09-17-2023 01:35 PM)Tribester Wrote:  Yes. Yes they do.

What Tribester said.

Why do you think that? Stetson is a Florida school in the Pioneer Conference. That conference is non-scholarship. Stetson is no better than a middle-of-the-pack school in that conference. They travelled 2500 miles to get beat at Montana State. Lastly, Stetson actually scored 20 points against the Bobcats.

Meanwhile, W&M got a win on the road while allowing less than 100 yards offense and no defensive touchdowns. ANY win on the road against a scholarship team that made the playoffs just a few years ago deserves more credit than Montana St. beating Stetson 57-20.

Sure enough, Sacramento State jumped us into #4. We are #5.

Sac. St. plays at Idaho (currently #7) this week. Since Sac. St. has won 12 straight road games they might actually be favored. Even if Sac. St. loses then Idaho will probably exchange places with them and jump us based on the strength of that win. Hopefully we can equalize those jumps by winning at Virginia in Week 6.

I'm happy with #5. Easy to recover if we start picking it up.

Some interesting games this week in the Top 10:

#3 Montana State goes to #10 Weber State.
#7 Idaho hosts #4 Sacramento State.

There are two ways of looking at this as far as who W&M should root for. On the one hand, if Weber beats Montana St. and Idaho beats Sac. St. then W&M (with its own win, of course) could rise to #3 with those four above-named Big Sky schools all clustered in the middle of the top 10 (with Holy Cross and Furman mixed in there). On the other hand, perhaps W&M should root for Montana St. and Sac. St. to win...thereby knocking two close pursuers (Weber, Idaho) off the tracks and not breathing down our necks. This scenario presumes that Montana St. and Sac. St. will lose somewhere else down the line giving W&M the chance to jump them then.

Tribe back to #4 in Coaches poll, as Sacramento St drops. STATS poll has us staying at #5, as Idaho leapfrogs us. Whatever, just take care of business one game at a time, and the rest will fall where it may.

(10-10-2023 11:09 AM)Zorch Wrote:  Other non-CAA games of interest that will affect the Top 25 polls:

1. #1 South Dakota State plays Northern Iowa (receiving votes (rv)). We want SDSU to win and keep N. Iowa down (and eventually out of the playoffs).

2. #3 Idaho hosts #16 Montana. We probably want to knock Montana further down the polls. However, wouldn't lose too much sleep over an Idaho loss either, as a way of moving them further down the polls.

3. #5 Furman at Samford (rv). If W&M wins out then a Samford win would be better. If W&M stumbles again then a Furman win would help keep Samford below us. Of course, since the game is this week, we have no way of knowing if W&M will stumble again. I'll go with favoring Samford.

4. #6 North Dakota State at #15 North Dakota. Probably want North Dakota to fall further behind us....but definitely wouldn't mind if NDSU took another hit.

5. #10 South Dakota hosts #23 Youngstown St. South Dakota went from #15 to #10 based on last weeks 38-7 win over mighty Murray State (leapfrogging W&M in the process). Personally, I think that's way too high of a jump and not worthy of passing us when we lost to a P4 team. It just shows the biases of the voters....favoring MVFC and Big Sky teams. So, I hope Youngstown beats them and knocks them below us again (of course, based on the aforementioned biases, the voters would probably shoot YSU ahead of us).

Well, most of those results did not go our way....so this week W&M has dropped from #11 to #13....in a week where we didn't play.

In fact, most of the teams that didn't play dropped in the poll (talk about a recency bias!!) except for Western Carolina who moved up from #9 to #8. Holy Cross fell from #12 to #15, North Carolina Central fell from #14 to #16, and Florida A&M fell from #18 to #19. UT Martin and Central Arkansas stayed the same.

Meanwhile, the Big Sky and Missouri Valley gained inordinate credit for playing each other within conference. Montana jumped from #16 to #9 for beating #3 Idaho (but they apparently have lost no credit for barely beating Div-II Ferris State and Idaho State; also beating mighties Butler and Utah Tech; and losing to N. Arizona). South Dakota jumped from #10 to #6 (!!) for squeaking by #23 Youngstown State 34-31 on a last second FG. Southern Illinois went from #13 to #12 for beating mighty Murray State (which shouldn't have been enough to leapfrog both W&M and Holy Cross). North Dakota beat NDSU and jumped from #15 to #11 (which makes more sense than South Dakota's jump). In other words, no matter which ranked team wins in the MVFC or Big Sky they move up but the losing team doesn't move down much (whereas W&M goes down for losing to FBS Virginia and in a bye week and Holy Cross goes down for a bye week). Well, both Montana and Idaho are off this week...let's see if they drop down....

Here are the games of interest this week:

#1 SDSU visits #12 S. ILL. W&M wants SDSU to win.

#2 Montana St. visits #3 Sac. St. I want Sac. St. to win because I would rather W&M go out there than back out to Montana.

#4 Furman visits #8 W. Carolina. I guess we want Furman because W&M has less ground to cover to pass WCU in the polls. Could mean a future trip to Greenville in the playoffs.

#11 North Dakota at N. Iowa. Need the unranked Panthers to win to drop UND below us. We should stay above UNI as long as we keep winning. ;o)

And here’s the most recent playoff bracketology. This newest projection has the Tribe hosting Davidson in 1st round, winner plays @ Western Carolina. And our quadrant again runs through Bozeman

https://herosports.com/fcs-football-2023...ns-1-bzbz/