Only my SDSt -6 wager. Heck of a second half effort from Sac though. It looked like this was well on the way to being a 30 point blowout and yet they've still got an outside shot midway through the 4th.

Sac still hanging around. Only down 14 and getting the ball.

Though having a punt downed at the 2 doesn't help them much.

The margin of victory is definitely surprising but Sac was the underdog today. A couple years ago was actually an upset.

That first drive seemed pretty easy for SDSt. I didn't watch last week but I imagine that's what almost all their drives against us looked like.

I was thinking it might be rare for that to happen but in 2018 the 8 seeded teams all won their first game. 7 of 8 won their first game in 2014.

They came a foot short of having a chance to tie (or win with a 2 point conversion) with less than 10 seconds left.

For those who care about such things, the Sac line got bet down to SDSt -6 so lot of people betting on Sac.

That will definitely do it.

57 points on only 368 yards. How the heck does that happen?

That's one nice thing about playing in a one bid league. These games basically don't matter. I mean, you don't want to put up an 0fer or anything like that, but you've got the ability to try things out and give a bunch of players minutes to see what they can do.

You're correct on that front. Grad transfers don't need to sit out a year. IIRC there used to be a rule where the grad school program that you're enrolling in couldn't be offered at the school you were at but I'm not sure if that's still the case.

That's a hell of a win right there.

And not being able to throw the ball consistently doesn't help either. Much easier to run the ball when teams have to respect your passing game.

SIU might not have been after losing to Youngstown at home but they're still a good team. Seems like they probably should have swapped the SIU-SD pod with the Davidson-Kennesaw St pod. Then you'd have SIU-East Tennessee St and Kennesaw St-North Dakota State.

But that's what happens when you prioritize travel. SIU would have to fly either way. Davidson to East Tennessee St is less than a 3 hr drive while Kennesaw to ETSt is 4 1/2 hours.

Montana is favored by 2 1/2 or 3 1/2 depending on where you look.

ESPN listing SDSt as 8 1/2 favorites over Sac State per Caesars Sportsbook. Was hoping that would be under a TD so I would jump on SDSt.

Montana St is 13 1/2 point favorite over UT Martin

NDST -12 over Southern Illinois
JMU -16 over SE Louisiana
Sam Houston -14 over Incarnate Word
Nova -11 1/2 over Holy Cross
East Tenn -1 over Kennesaw St

$110M for a coach but they'll still tell us they can't pay the players.

Hawkins also said Barriere is arguably the best player he's ever coached against, which includes five Heisman winners, so maybe we don't take Hawkins literally on this stuff, especially when it comes to preseason quotes. Maybe he actually felt that way or maybe it was just preseason coach-speak where everything is positive. I bet it's the latter.

I'm not saying the 2021 team was bad. Second best record we've posted at the FCS level. Even if you're pessimistic on this team and rank 2019 above them, it's still a top-3 UCD team since we moved to FCS. We're in a pretty good spot right now as a program, though of course we want to keep building on it. I'm just saying that the 2018 was clearly better/more talented/however you want to frame it.

The 2018 team was unequivocally better than the 2021 team
10-3 vs. 8-4
12.3 point differential vs 5.6
6.2 yards per play on offense vs 5.4
5.5 yards per play allowed on defense vs 5.8
61.86 Sagarin rating (8th in FCS) vs 54.08 (25th)
6.21 Massey rating (4th in FCS) vs. 5.54 (18th)

I could make an argument that the 2019 team was better than this team, they just played a way tougher schedule (lost to an 8-5 Cal and 6 FCS playoff teams, didn't lose to a 1-win FCS team, only 1 loss by 20+ points vs. 2 for the 2021 team). Like what do you think our record is this year if we play UCLA (8-4), NDSt, Sac, Montana St, Montana, EW and either Northern Iowa (6-6) or South Dakota (7-5)? At best that's probably a 5-6 team.

At the very least, 2021 team is much closer to 2019 than they are to 2018.

SDSt. They’re really good.

Really wishing I had trusted my instinct and bet SDSt today. Will be interesting to see where the line against Sac is next week.