Sagarin has Davis rated 5th highest and Illinois State rated 6th, with Montana, Incarnate Word, Idaho, Tennessee Martin all bunched within little more than a point.

The Davis Illinois State game is projected as the most competitive of the eight FCS games based on Sagarin ratings

Regarding Harper being the QB next year - He has been on the team for five years already and has negligible game experience. He has a shot at earning the role but he shouldn’t be given the role. Ideally you want to develop a player who can be around for more than one year, and Harper can’t. Plough has given the reins to a freshman before when he was OC at NAU.

Regarding Lan resting, not a chance unless game is clearly decided.
If they wanted to see what Fisher could do, they would have let him play in the out of conference games early in the season. They seem to belatedly decided he is the number 2 running back but they are going to play Larison most the time including on special teams.

6 players on defense first or second team all big sky is impressive


I thought he missed them also, but then noticed they were mentioned in the preceding posts.

Really liked the podcast.
Agree with the areas mentioned that need to improve, two of which, run blocking and the need to have the corners defend more closely, are impacted by player injuries in the last game. Anyone know the status of Main and McWilliams? McWilliams was injured while on the punt coverage team, when two players landed in top of him and he appeared to have an arm or shoulder injury. Might have lost two starters in the final league game.

Crediting Montana’s home field with 18 points?

I have no idea what Sagarin’s eigenvector analysis is, and he ain’t sayin, but that method comes up with SEMO favored while his regular analysis has Illinois State favored. So perhaps it will be a competitive game.
I don’t have much confidence the SEMO will win but that is entirely because I watched the first third of their last game, in which they looked horrible. They came back to make a respectable score though.

in person scouting is prohibited in the NCAA. Remember the contoversy over Michigan stealing signs, that is the rule that one of the Michigan assistants broke a few years back by buying tickets for friends and receiving reports and phone video.

There is a link on ESPN+
We will see if the event starts
Yep it works

Another factor is metrix like Massey, and two ESPN metrics that as far as I know are not published, South Dakota was ahead of Davis in Massey. Yesterday Davis likely moved lower as they did not beat the Massey “line”. Probably same with other computer metrics.
The committee has no standard for rating the teams, members use whatever method they want among the tools that are approved,

I think you are correct on the USD 4th, Davis 5th. Its not just that USD big win was today.
If the committee had USD fourth after the games of Oct.26, which they did, what has happened since that would lead them to move Davis ahead of them? That was their ranking after their loss on the 26th.
Davis is 3-1 since then with their best win being Montana.
USD is 3-0 with a best win against NDSU.

The yearly recruiting page show where players Davis offers end up. Seems to show our competition isn’t Sac or other Big Sky teams but mostly FBS, Service Academies and Ivy League. But I think beating all the California FCS teams helps make that true.

That was reminiscent of the early in the season ineffective pass defense with a lead like against A&M commerce. Not a one time thing.

My Ouija Board is misplaced,

South Dakota led in the one committee ranking on Oct.26, and their record since then is undefeated with a win over the Number 1 team, there is no way Davis ranks higher by the committee, regardless of score of the Causeway.

If Sac plays to their average against conference teams, and Davis plays an at the level of the average Big Sky team, Davis will cover. Sac yielded 40 points per game while scoring 27.1

There is the option of another quarter of undergrad. Maybe satisfy another major’s requirements. Lots of student take extra time, particularly if they transferred or change majors.

They list by academic year mostly ignoring redshirt status. The exception to that are the upper classmen who had a redshirt year a few years ago already reflected in their bio, and some transfers.

But they also have a data entry problem, they officially submit a “Final Book” which the NCAA, Big Sky, and other entities use as the statistics source, and that “Final Book” contains errors. Then they have difficulty correcting the errors, as they don’t control the stats, the NCAA does. I think that is the issue with the guys who were listed as playing in five games in their red shirt year.

Its a mystery that Davis can’t list players eligibility kon the roster, it takes a glance to do so in most cases.
Another mystery is why we have multiple players who are listed as playing 5 games in what could be a redshirt year. Nava, Souriolle, Fisher. Can’t they count?