Baldy wrote:Pwns wrote:
Go back and look at the ECU team's schedule from that season. You'd think they were in a major conference with all the big names on it. Aside from that game, most of our FBS games were against blue bloods like UGA, Auburn, Florida, Florida State, and Miami. We didn't get many games against the Wyomings, CMUs, Colorado States, Minnesotas, or even Kansas State's except when we briefly went away from an option offense.
But that's beside the point. You seem to be implying I'm cherry-picking here, but I think I've seen enough to say that's not the case. I've said before in this thread that the CAA not being up to what it was is a big reason the FCS isn't as strong as it used to be and not just the FBS defectors. A CAA playoff team lost to a Duquesne team that was destroyed by UMass, Maine has looked bad against multiple bad G5 teams, Kennesaw lost to Georgia State, and a second team that eliminated a CAA playoff team was soundly beaten by the fourth or fifth-best Sun Belt team. That seems more like signal than noise.
You can't tell me all that could happen in the CAA's of most of the '00s. The year-by-year comparisons of Sagarin aren't really overly convincing. The wave of recent start-ups that think they're going to be the next UCF because they're in a market are most certainly dead weight in the G5 as well as programs like Texas State that have money but still suck. That doesn't mean the FCS isn't weaker than it was.
One more comment, 4 of the 10 Sun Belt teams in the current Sagarin rankings would be top 5, and 7 of the 10 would be top-25. For a conference that gets mocked as being a glorified FCS conference, it seems pretty damn strong.
Not to mention, the Sun Belch as a whole (Eastern Division specifically) is heads and shoulders better than the MVFC, which is head and shoulders better than the rest of FCS...according to JSO's Sagarin anyway.
Massey has NDSU at 18, App State at 41, Princeton at 51, SDSU at 56, EWU at 63, Dartmouth at 78 and Georgia Southern at 79.
Sounds like the old Socon would at least be competitive in the MVFC, Big Sky and Ivy with 22 more scholarships.
