I'll take any votes, but like most polls, you need a couple more weeks to shake this out. How does UCD get 2 votes after disassembling San Diego...which received 16 votes? EWU seems to be ranked pretty high considering their slow start.

Yep outside of the top couple spots (JMU and NDSU are clearly 1 and 2 right now), polls don't mean a whole lot just a couple weeks into the season. I think the discrepancy in votes has a lot to do with their initial placement from their results last season and reputation. EWU is getting by on reputation right now. They've played 2 good teams so far, but they haven't looked competitive at all compared to the last couple seasons where they would have. They could just be a middle of the pack team in the Big Sky this season. In fact, over on their fan forum there are some fans calling for Gubrud to be benched. In regards to San Diego, I think the voters are hesitant to drop any team a huge amount. USD needed a comeback win against a D2 school and did next to nothing against us. If they don't pick it up in their conference play they will find themselves out of the rankings pretty quickly.

I'm just happy that it looks like we're getting back on the right track, of course as others have mentioned, Gould looked decent in his first season too. I'm going to be looking for continued improvement as Hawkins and staff continue to recruit their guys and refine their gameplans. There are very few reasons as to why we couldn't be a powerhouse in the Big Sky.

Didn't Gould start that first season 0-4, though? Completely agree that it's WAY too early to judge Hawkins yet, but there just seem to be many more indicators of upward trajectory now compared to 4 years ago. Time will tell, but I'm just happy to be cautiously optimistic instead of increasingly worried (4 years ago) or hopelessly depressed (2 years ago).

Yeah we did start 0-4 in Gould's first season, but we ended up going 5-3 in conference which people were pretty excited about at the time. Hell, even if we do get blown up this season in conference we should still be a fun and fast paced team to watch which is significantly better than getting blown up while running a low risk, low excitement, ineffective offense.

The Big Sky isn't that tough, we've just happened to be bad since we joined. Evidence for that is our record against Big Sky teams before we joined, and look at the sagarin ratings of the teams all clustered around mediocrity. I think we will win games here and there and be competitive in most games in conference.

The Ags picked up an additional 10 votes (for a total of 12) in this week's poll. They could get closer to a seat at the top 25 table with a win over No. 18 (coaches)/23 (STATS) Weber State.

Jeff Sagarin has the Ags ranked 5th in the Big Sky and #148 out of 255 D1 teams overall.

121 - Eastern Washington
126 - North Dakota
139 - Southern Utah
147 - Weber State
148 - UCD
149 - Montana
152 - Northern Arizona
167 - Montana State
170 - Cal Poly
178 - Northern Colorado
180 - Portland State
201 - Idaho State
202 - Sac State

http://sagarin.com/sports/cfsend.htm

How low is UNR ranked if they lost to Idaho State last week.

Nevada 0-3 is #132.

Other teams of west coast interest:

#8 Washington 3-0
#10 USC 3-0
#19 Oregon 3-0
#22 Stanford 1-2 (go figure)
#24 Washington State 3-0
#30 UCLA 2-1
#42 SDSU 3-0 (with a win over Stanford and 20 places behind the Cardinal..huh..)
#48 NDSU 2-0 (highest ranked FCS team)
#52 Cal 3-0
#96 Oregon State 1-3
#129 Fresno State 1-2
#138 San Jose State 1-3

By those numbers...Saturday should be a good one!

Yep, I think it's going to be a nail-biter!