That should have been ruled a first down on the last play.

Why did the clock start after the false start? They were down to 7 on the play clock and then the clock started again when the play clock started. Cost us about 20 seconds.

Needed that stop on 3rd down there.

Yeah this result can only help us. If we lose to Sac close, I don’t know if either us or Montana gets in but we had better be ahead of them.

Guessing he just picked a random likely 3 point score. But he's probably thinking that UCD kicks a pair of FGs during the game.

And if they get a top-2 seed they lock up home field until the title game if they make it that far. Lose and they run the risk of dropping and facing a road game at Montana St or North Dakota St (depending on the results of other games and how the seeds shake out) in the semis if the teams advance that far.

Plus with the coaches/AD's voting they're going to be biased. Not just in favor of their own teams but in their own conference. If their opponents are ranked higher, their wins look better or losses not as bad.

As for Montana, it's definitely beneficial for them drawing 25K fans every game because they don't have to schedule an FBS game or two every year like we do. They have scheduled FBS teams in the past, just not each season.

Apologies if this was sarcasm but it’s all the preseason polls.

Montana was 3, UCD was 25 and Idaho was unranked. Then Montana started 5-0 against a crap schedule and even though Idaho beat them, they were only 4-2. Never mind those were both FBS losses.

Same thing happened to us in 2019. Started out #5 and didn’t fall out of the top 25 until we fell to 4-5.

You could even add Idaho in there too. Montana is 7-3 against FCS competition while Idaho is 6-2. Montana’s non-con was Northwestern St, South Dakota and Indiana St who are a combined 8-21. Lost to Sac, Weber and home to Idaho. Idaho lost to 2 FBS teams.

Definitely nothing there to justify them being 10 spots ahead of Idaho or UCD.

LOL at all the polls having Idaho over us. I mean, the coaches polls are always useless regardless of sport. Most of them don’t even vote anyway.

But we have the same record and we beat them by 18 at their place. And it wasn’t a “scored late to make it look worse than it was” type of game. We led by 10+ for the final 43 minutes and were up 31-7 at half. They stopped us from scoring one time (11 drives, 5 TD, 3 FG, 2 drives to end each half and 1 punt).

We’re both 6-4. Neither team has a bad loss. They’ve got 2 FBS losses but their loss to us is a worse loss than we have. Their best win is over a 7-3 Montana team by 7. Is that a better win than us beating them by 18? I don’t know. It’s probably even.

So if the two teams are pretty even as far as their resume goes and Team A beat the crap out of Team B on the road, you should probably rank Team A above Team B.

Not an expert by any means but I think it could matter. We'd absolutely be on the bubble with a loss so every part of your resume comes into play here. We've seen it happen at the FBS level for the 4th spot in the playoff where Ohio State got left out of the playoff in part because their one loss was by 29 to a 6-6 Purdue team while Oklahoma lost by 3 to a 9-4 Texas team. Not to mention that it will be the most recent result the committee sees. If UCD loses by a FG to an undefeated Sac that the committee is going to give a top-3 seed, to go along with two other close losses to two other likely seeds, it's going to look much better than losing by 30.

Maybe we're in no matter what already. Maybe any loss to Sac and we're out no matter what. It would probably be valuable to check out one of those FCS boards where people follow it more closely. If the season ended now, I think we'd be in the playoffs.

To piggyback off of movie's response a bit.

If we beat Sac, we're in for sure. I would bet literally anything in the world on that. Additionally - and we'll get a better idea this week when the polls come out - if we beat Sac I think we get a home game in the first round (though no bye). All you have to be is top-16 and you get a home game. Take it FWIW, but Sagarin has us as the 6th best FCS team. Massey has us 13th. Bill Connelly's SP+ has us 11th. If we beat a top-3 (by the computers and polls) team regardless of how ugly it is, we're moving up.

Live movie said, we're in a top-2 conference, we've hammered every bad team we've played, we just beat a ranked team on the road fairly easily and our only losses were to FBS, #1, #3, #7. Plus we'd be riding a 6 game win streak capped off by beating an undefeated team.

A loss and I think it depends in part on how we lose. If we get blown out it becomes tougher. But a close loss and our only bad loss was by 17 to Montana State which isn't even that bad of a loss. We were within a TD with 6 minutes left in the 3rd quarter. Northern Iowa got in at 6-5 last year. They had one bad loss to a 4-7 team in OT but otherwise only lost to playoff teams. However, they had three wins over playoff teams including 2 on the road. 2018 Northern Iowa probably had a worse resume than we would this year with two losses to sub-.500 teams though they did beat South Dakota St by 15.

So to summarize, win and we're in for sure, maybe with a home game. Lose and we sweat it out.

In all likelihood this is a playoff play in game for us.
It's also a rivalry game.
Where our rival is undefeated.

LET'S EFFING GO!

They seem to be a solid team (going based on results). Before today they'd lost to 6-4 Wash St by 7, 3-7 Indiana by 13 and an undefeated Sac by 3 on the road. Also won at Montana. Missed Montana St and Weber but all you can do is play your schedule and they've played their schedule pretty well this year.

Like you said, this was a good win for us. We put up 44 on them and the most they'd given up before today was 35.

Yeah, there's been too many times when a coach has said some form of the "I'm happy here and I'm not leaving" only to then leave that there's no point in believing them.

Now, could Taylor be telling the truth? Sure. But only time will tell on that.

Go on the road on comfortably beat a top-15 team? That’s a “we want to make the playoffs” type win right there. Beat Sac and we’re in for sure. A close loss and then I have no idea.

I think Eastern Washington is bad this year.

I know. I’m really going out on a limb with that one.

Admittedly I forgot about the ending to the 2021 season.

I agree we need to start winning tough / big games. — movielover

It's definitely a frustrating spot to be in. On one hand, it's good that we're not getting hammered by the good teams and are generally in these games late. And it's definitely good that we're handling our business against bad teams. Shows that just because the opponent isn't a quality one, that we're not overlooking them. So you could say we're up for every game and not really having any letdown or look ahead games.

But on the other hand, when you're getting so close, you want to get over the hump. And for the most part, we haven't been able to do so.

LOL. I missed that part in my post. Like you can't just remove a guy's best season like that. The season happened. And even though it's better than what we've done in his other seasons, the schedule was partly the reason for that. We missed Weber and Montana State (2 of the other 3 Big Sky playoff teams) and we also got a 1-11 San Jose State team.

You can only beat who is on your schedule, for good or for bad. We were a minute away from hosting an FCS Semifinal game that year.