That's true. We would also have beaten Sac State when Montana lost to them though. I don't know exactly what the committee values. Assuming we split the two games, we'd have a better conference record than Montana (unless they beat Montana St) and unless Idaho loses to Idaho State, we'd have a worse conference record than they would. And if Montana beats EWU, we'd have worse overall record than both Idaho and Montana. At least in Montana's case, that's due to us playing an FBS team while they didn't.

So maybe beating Idaho would give us the nod if the committee is debating us vs. Idaho.

Boy was that article a disaster. I mean, Hawkins isn't perfect but that article was not great.

-He acts as if it's a criticism of Hawkins that Hawkins won with Gould's players. It is a criticism of Gould that he couldn't get it done with those players. The fact that Hawkins took a team that was a combined 7-26 over the previous 3 years and led them to a 10-3 record, a co-conference championship, a playoff bye and a playoff win in just his second year with a bunch of players he didn't recruit is remarkable. Even in his first year the Aggies were only 5-6 but their losses were to a 10-3 FBS team, 3 FCS playoff teams and 2 teams that went 7-4 (the top 5 teams in the Big Sky).

-He seems to value beating Sac State a bit too much. He mentions that Gould's only saving grace was beating Sac 3 times in 4 seasons. Personally, I'd rather be a solid team that makes the playoffs but loses to it's rival than a bad team that goes 3-8 with one of those wins over it's rival. Ideally we'd be both better than Sac and a good team. But if I'm picking one, give me the good team.

-Obviously he either can't count or doesn't know what constitutes a winning record, as was covered above. We've had winning record in 3 of 5 seasons. And as I covered above (about 2017) and in another thread (about 2019), we literally only lost to good teams those years. I know eventually we've got to start beating good teams but a 5-7 team with losses to either FBS teams or FCS playoff teams doesn't mean we're a bad team.

-He mentions that Idaho can hang it's hat on beating Montana and losing by just 3 points to Sac this year but then with us says that narrow losses to SDSt and Weber are noteworthy but there are no brownie points. Just mention Idaho beating Montana then. But if you're going to give Idaho brownie points for losing to Sac, do the same to us. Also, while yes, wins and losses do matter, there's a difference between playing good teams tough and getting hammered by them. It doesn't have to be black and white. When we're talking about where we are as a program and how close we are to being where we want to be, how you're faring against good teams absolutely matters.

-He says no coaches voted for us in the latest poll when in reality we got 3 votes (reading is hard!).

-He says 17 of Hawkins's 36 wins at UCD were against Poly, Idaho St, NAU and Northern Colorado but then only cites the combined record of those teams this year. Doesn't make sense. Those teams weren't awful every single year. And even if they were, there's something to be said for not laying an egg and losing to a bad team. Unless I'm missing one, we've got one bad loss (2021 to Idaho State) in his 5 years.

-Says Taylor has raised the bar too far out of Hawkins's reach. Before I admit that, I'd like him to answer which coach has more playoff wins at his current school? I mean, that metric is as good as any other he put forth in his article.

-He also seems particularly hung up on what realistically can be considered nothing more than a comment by a coach excited about his team during the preseason.

Like I said, Hawkins isn't perfect. But this is nothing more than a hit piece from a dude who appears to have an ax to grind with Hawkins.

Reminds me of our 2019 schedule. By the final rankings we faced #1, #3, #4, #6 and #9 plus played at Cal and at North Dakota (7-5 but made the playoffs). Teams 1, 3 and 4 were three of the four semifinalists in the playoffs that year too.

Absolutely. If we go 7-4, we'd have wins over a top-25 team (on the road) plus a top-10 team (maybe still top-5 for Sac depending on other results). We'd also have losses to an FBS team and three losses to top-10 FCS teams (two of which were close).

I don't have the time to spend looking at all of FCS, but I wouldn't be shocked if we get in going 6-5 where the loss is a close one. I think this would be more likely to happen if we lose close on the road at Idaho but beat Sac since that's a signature win.

We definitely want Sac to win out before playing us. The better that win looks the better. I suppose if you just want to ruin Sac's undefeated season, them losing by a FG at Weber won't affect their ranking much and therefore won't diminish how a UCD win over them appears come playoff time (if we're in that discussion).

By seeded do you mean top-8 (a bye and a home game) or just top-16 (just a home game)? Because I don't think there's any chance we get top-8, and those are the only seeded teams. Weber, Montana State, Sac, South Datoka State and North Dakota State are all above us barring some ridiculous results. So are Incarnate Word and Holy Cross. At least one of the CAA teams will probably rise up too. That's 8 right there.

Did Sac's QB get hurt? Only 8-19 passing for 92 yards in the game and the backup QB has 26 carries.

Sure. Montana nearly beat them with their backup QB playing most of the game. Weber and Montana State could beat them. NDSt and SDSt could beat them. In all likelihood, they'll have to beat at least two of these teams in the playoffs to win the title. And they play at Weber in a couple weeks.

That's a pure film study call. You see a team repeatedly start to cheat backwards on a return and you file that away in case you need it at a perfect time.

Much different stakes but Alabama did that against Clemson in the first title game between the two. Noticed that Clemson was lining up a certain way every time and they could exploit it.

Heck of an onside kick call by Sac when they were down 7 too which helped them come back.

I wouldn't be shocked if a 6-5 UCD gets in by beating either Sac or what appears to be a decent Idaho team. 6-5 UCD vs. 7-4 Idaho might be tough though even if UCD beats them. Neither team would have a bad loss. Idaho has lost to two FBS teams and in this scenario would lose to us and Sac. And while UCD would win the H2H, Idaho would have a much better win by winning at Montana. We really need Sac to beat Idaho next weekend. If Idaho goes 8-3 and wins at Montana and Sac, I don't think it would matter if we beat them and finished 6-5.

6-5 teams have gotten in before. Northern Iowa just did last year though they won at Sac, at South Dakota St and vs. Southern Illinois. And the MVFC did get 6 teams in last year so that wouldn't be unprecedented either.

But yeah, we probably do have to go 7-4 to get in.

Wasn't just a shot to the head. The Sac player was ejected for targeting.

Kicking a FG from the 1 in basically any situation outside of the 4th quarter where it's a game winning/game tying situation is gross and cowardly. I didn't watch so I don't know what happened leading up to that. I just hate kicking from the 1.

Since you mentioned Plough, Boise just fired him. Maybe we can bring him back.

Not totally fair comparing our PPG output this year so far to previous years when we've played an FBS team, a consensus top-5 team an another top-15 team. That's not to say there aren't issues of course. There very well could be. Just that straight ppg isn't a good way to evaluate that yet.

LOL. I didn't want to be too pessimistic with my prediction.

Maybe I should have said SDST by 21+.

South Dakota St by 3 TDs.

Hard to believe a guy that was that dominant for us can't seem to make the NFL. — 88Aggie

He's going from a big fish in a smaller pond to a small fish in a large pond.

Think about it this way. Lets say every team has 8 WRs. There are 32 teams so that's 256 total WRs in the NFL. I know there's practice squad and dudes get hurt but we'll stick with 256. Some of these guys are done after a year or two but plenty stick around for a while. This isn't college where the roster completely turns over every 4-5 years. So there aren't that many jobs open each year. Now let's look at college. There are 124 FBS teams. Lets say for the sake of it that you have 8 WRs per team. It might be more what whatever. The exact numbers don't matter. That's almost 1000 WR's in FBS at any one time. Factoring in redshirt year, lets say 1/5 of those graduate each year so 200. It's probably more since the guys at the top generally aren't staying 4 or 5 years. Obviously they're not all trying to go pro but a lot are. How many open WR positions are there each year? Less than half almost certainly. Is it 1/4? Well that's only 64 spots.

So unless you're highly drafted, there's a couple factors that come into play. Luck is the biggest one. Mainly, do you get the chance to prove yourself. Maybe you go somewhere and a couple guys in front of you get hurt and you perform. Maybe you get lucky and go to the right team where a position coach sees something and makes some sort of tweak that takes you up a level and helps you break through.

At the pro level, all of these dudes are super talented. Different sport but have you heard of Brian Scalabrine? Played 11 years in the NBA and averaged 3.1 ppg for his career and retired in 2012. He told a story about how guys like to challenge him to play 1v1 when he's at the gym because they think they can beat an NBA player. He pretty regularly smokes them because, well, he played in the NBA and they didn't. He said one time a guy was trash talking him and he responded with "I'm closer to being LeBron James than you are to me". It's both an amazing line and true. We see some guy who doesn't play much and think "well he's not that great because he's not playing" when the reality is, he's still really good.

It's tough for Doss because the dude is a stud. But so is every other receiver in the NFL.

I guess you could make that argument. But they could have a $100M budget surplus and if the Big 10 came calling to offer them $50M more, they'd jump in a second. Having a debt is just a convenient coincidence.

Newsom didn't have anything to do with this. If he didn't sign that bill, all those other states mentioned in the article still would have gone ahead and done it anyway. And even if NIL wasn't a thing, all these schools care about is the bottom line. If they can make more money from football by joining a different conference, they don't care about anything else. They're no different from any other sports league or even a large corporation. Money comes first and if making more money aligns with keeping the fans/consumers happy, all the better. If it doesn't align, oh well, F the fans/consumers.