And also the more creative team. All I've seen from Sac so far is Run Right, Run Center and Run Left.

Offense looking pretty good as well so far.

Defense looking good so far, which is great to see.

Great start.

Sac wearing black pants and black helmets is weird.

Confirmed my TV just swapped from the ACC pregame show to the UC Davis game.

MVFC is going to be nuts. The way it's trending you'll have

12-0 North Dakota St
8-4 South Dakota (3-1)
8-4 Illinois St (2-2)
8-4 North Dakota or South Dakota St (3-1 or 2-2)
8-4 Youngstown St (2-2)
7-5 North Dakota or South Dakota St (2-2 or 1-3)
7-5 Southern Illinois (1-3)

Record in parenthesis is against the above teams besides NDSt. Though if you want to include them, North Dakota St played and beat all 6 of these teams, which makes their record even more impressive.

Excellent! Thanks!

Is this game really only on ESPN+ or is on local TV somewhere that I’m not seeing?

Winner gets a championship belt, which can be nicknamed the Jock Strap.

Yeah, there's a big difference between "the officials got the call wrong, it might have cost us the game, here's the video" and "the officials have it out for us and are making calls against us to spite us".

Who do you jump us over though?

South Dakota has 4 losses, all to either FBS or ranked FCS teams. They have 3 wins over ranked FCS teams.
Illinois St has 3 losses, all to either FBS or ranked FCS teams. They have 2 wins over ranked FCS teams.
Youngstown has 4 losses, all to either FBS or ranked FCS teams. They have 2 wins over ranked FCS teams.
Jackson St maybe. They have a FBS loss and a loss to 7-4 Grambling. No ranked wins. You could sell me on us being ahead of them.
Stephen F Austin has 2 losses, to FBS and a ranked FCS team. They have 1 ranked win.
Villanova has 2 losses, to FBS and a ranked FCS team. They have 1 ranked win.
Mercer has 1 loss to an unranked (but 9-2) FCS team. No ranked wins. You could sell me on us being ahead of them.
Monmouth has 2 losses, to a FBS and a ranked FCS team. They have 1 ranked win.
Rhode Island has 2 losses, to a FBS team and a 4-5 Ivy League team. They have 1 ranked win. They seem like they're benefitting from the schedule since they miss Momnouth and Nova. You could sell me on them.

Tennessee Tech, Harvard and Lehigh are probably overseeded but they're all undefeated. Going to be a hard sell on them, even if we might be better. Seems like there's a clear top-3 and then a huge jumble of teams depending on what rating system you like and how much stock you put in a tougher schedule vs winning more games.

That Idaho St loss really hurts. Even if we win that game by 1 point, which still isn't great, it would mean we're a playoff lock, likely a have a home game locked up, and are playing for a first round bye this weekend against Sac.

I think we're better than the 17th best team, but I don't think it's unreasonable to put us there. Seems weird to be dropped 6 spots because of a 3 point swing (39-38 win or a 36-35 win vs 38-36 loss), but there's consequences for losing a game at home to a 5-6 team.

I think it would have been better for us if Sac had lost since they'd be out of the playoffs for sure. I don't think us beating a 7-5 Sac vs. a 6-6 Sac matters all that much to our seeding. Where it matters is now if Sac beats us, they get selected over us if the Big Sky only gets 3 teams.

A few years ago I would have said Sac St joining the MAC is the stupidest thing ever, but we currently live in a world where USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington are in the Big 10 and Cal and Stanford are in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

LOL. I had the same thought. Misspelling an incorrect phrase is some solid work.

I'm sure most voters just saw we lost by 3 TDs and assumed it was an easy MSU victory.

I'd take the points but I tend to be a pessimist about my teams.

Sac had a better resume than we did in 2023.

Using the STATS poll after the regular season ended...

Sac lost at No. 4 Idaho by 9, at home to No. 5 Montana St by 12, at No. 2 Montana by 27, at No. 25 UC Davis by 10. They won at 6-5 Nichols by 14 (playoff team by winning their conference) and at Stanford.

UC Davis lost at Oregon St, at home to 4-7 Eastern Washington by 3, at home to No. 2 Montana by 8 and at 5-6 Northern Arizona by 17. Won at 6-5 Weber St by 1, home to 6-5 Southern Utah by 2, and home to No. 15 Sac by 10.

We got burned that year because we lost to EWU and NAU. I get we had the H2H win, and that certainly counts for something. Both teams had 1 good win, we had 2 other wins over +.500 teams while they had one but we had two losses to sub .500 teams and they had none.

The year we actually got screwed over was 2022. Went 6-5 but lost to FBS, No. 1 by 2 points on the road, No. 2 by 6 points on the road, No. 3 by 17 on the road and No. 9 by 5 at home. We won at Idaho by 18 but they get picked over us. Deserved to be picked over Montana that year also.

On the other hand, had we lost, we would 100% need to win the Sac game to get in. I know we were winning in the 4th quarter, but it's not like we were up 21 when the game got stopped.

One game to keep an eye on is Youngstown St-Northern Iowa in the MVFC. For that conference, NDSt is in at (likely) 12-0. South Dakota doesn't play this weekend and is 8-4. Illinois St is in great shape at 8-3 with wins over South Dakota and SDSt. North Dakota plays South Dakota St. Both are 7-4. Winner is likely in. So that's four teams. Youngstown is 7-4 so a win would put them at 8-4. That's a team we'd be competing against on the bubble if we lose to Sac.

I'm sure there are others too.