Eighty days to go until our opening kickoff on Thursday night, September 1 when the Delaware State Hornets and the Delaware Fighting Blue Hens mix it up at Delaware Stadium in Newark for the First State Bowl.  UD HC Stan Brock starts the season on the proverbial hot seat for sure.  He is 17-18 overall at Delaware after last season’s poor 4-7 showing after a 6-6 record in his second season.   The proud Delaware football program is not a patient one.  No Fighting Blue Hen HC has survived three consecutive non-losing seasons and returned for the next.  From 1935-1937, Layal Clark had a 5-18-1 record over 3 losing seasons before being canned.  After two seasons with a 4-12 record, UD had seen enough of his successor Stephen Grenda.  He was ousted.  William D. Murray coached in Newark eight seasons successfully going 49-16-1 with only one losing season.  David Nelson coached UD to an 84-42-2 record over 15 seasons finishing on the short side only twice.  Legendary Hall of Famer Harold “Tubby” Raymond coached 36 seasons for an outstanding 300-119-3 record with four bowl wins, a national championship, and only three losing seasons.   His former player, K.C. Keeler, followed in his place and coached the Blue Hens for 12 seasons finishing 86-52 with a national championship, two losses in the FCS title game, and three losing seasons.  Interesting that Murray, Raymond, and Keeler were all gone after a losing season.  Nelson went 9-9 in his final two seasons.  Talk about a hot seat!  We’ll see if Brock gets his 2016 version of the Blue Hens off in the right direction against the hungry, in-state rival Hornets to prove he can continue the historical winning tradition for the Blue Hens.  If not, look for the Delaware administration to start looking for someone to lead them back to their winning ways at the traditional FCS power house…

Stan Brock has to bring back the Fighting Blue Hens winning ways this season, or…?  We witnessed seven Delaware wins under Tubby Raymond and attended the ceremony after his retirement when the school named their playing field after the coach who posted 300 wins for the Blue Hens.

We are set to see California host Stanford in the 119^th edition of the Big Game, longest rivalry on the west coast, on November 19. The Bears have the honor be the first FBS team to kick-off the 2016 season on August 27 when they travel to Sydney, Australia to play Hawaii at ANZ Stadium to get this college football season under way…So much for Art Briles coaching capabilities.  We came away from last season’s Baylor win over North Carolina, 49-38, in the Russell Athletic Bowl thoroughly impressed.  Without his top two starting QBs available due to injuries, he improvised using RBs and WRs in the Wildcat to run a very effective offense in an exciting game that we attended.  He improvised and overcame his team’s lack of QB experience to win a game over a quality competitor.  Now that we see how he was sidestepping legal and moral issues to keep his team intact instead of sending out the right message to the many sexual offenders on his squad, we have lost a lot respect for him as a man and as a mentor.  There is football and there is life, meaning teaching these young people right from wrong.  Looking the other way or manipulating a system of unending forgiveness at the expense of others is just going to cause more problems with these individuals and send out the wrong messages to other young people that as long as they can play football, they are allowed to do anything they want.  This is despicable at this level of “higher education”.  Wrong message! Briles and his players have mothers, grandmothers, sisters, daughters, and female family members just like everyone else.  It’s not right to treat other women so wrongly.  These college administrators and coaching staffs have to open their eyes and see that there is more to their purpose than winning and raising money for their schools.  There is still the responsibility of teaching in the courses of life.  It should become an integral part of their high-priced contracts.  That means teaching right from wrong, and there is no thin line here.  This state of tolerance for all these wrongdoings has to stop somewhere. There should be as much negative reinforcement if not more than the positive reinforcement we always seem to hear as an excuse to do nothing and let the wrongdoings continue.   I just hope we don’t see Briles “landing on his feet” coaching in the pros or in front of a camera at ESPN.  He should not be affiliated anywhere in the game of football ever again, or else the difference between what is right and wrong in society will continue to remain an incomprehensible blur…Looks like we’ll add another D3 Friday night game due to its locale and convenience for us before heading to Annapolis the next morning for UConn at Navy.  Montclair State, who is 12-0-1 over the years in games we’ve seen them play in, will visit a hapless FDU-Florham program on Friday, September 9 in the season opener for both squads.  MSU is under HC Rick Giancola in his 33^rd season at the New Jersey Athletic Conference power house during his 33 years as HC.  His 226-104-2 record dwarfs that of the Devils’ Brian Surace in his fifth season at FDU with a record of 7-43.  Since the start of FDU football in 1974, the Devils have had only four winning seasons. Their best record was achieved in 1993 when they finished 8-3, 6-1 in the Middle Atlantic Conference.  It was the only season they went to a post season game losing in an ECAC Bowl to Wesley of Delaware, 6-0.  Their non-conference loss that season was to Montclair, 22-12.  They lost to them again the following year, 20-13, on the way to a 5-4 season. With those wins, the Red Hawks lead this short series, 2-0.   FDU-Florham’s next win will be the 100^th in school history.  That averages out to be 2.3 wins per season!  We don’t expect #100 to come against the Red Hawks…Here’s what we rate as the Top Ten most entertaining, competitive, inter-conference FBS games scheduled in 2016: 1) Sept. 17 Ohio State at Oklahoma; 2) Sept. 3 Ole Miss vs Florida State in Orlando; 3) Nov. 17 Louisville at Houston; 4) Sept. 3 Wisconsin vs. LSU at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin; 5) Sept. 3 USC vs. Alabama at Arlington, TX; 6)  Sept. 3 Oklahoma at Houston; 7) Sept. 3 Georgia vs. North Carolina in Atlanta; 8) Sept. 10  Penn State at Pittsburgh; 9) Sept. 10  Arkansas at TCU; 10) Sept. 24   Navy at Air Force.  September 3 will weigh heavily on the early season rankings…

Samaje Perine (32) and the OU Sooners will host Ohio State this season as we anticipate this as the best inter-conference game of 2016.

Among Lindy’s pre-season Top 25, including bowl games last year, we saw 12 of their Top 25 in 2015.  For our regular season plans in 2016, only six grace their pre-season picks in their publication that recently reached the newsstands.  Among those we will see will be No. 4 Ohio State when they visit Penn State on October 22.  We will see No. 10 Stanford visit No. 11 Notre Game on October 15 and then visit California at Berkeley at the Big Game on November 19.    Before seeing this Irish host the Cardinal, they will play at our Big Tailgate On October 1  in The Meadowlands when we see them play Syracuse under their new HC Dino Babers.  Defending AAC champ Houston ranked 12^th will play the Midshipman of Navy in Annapolis in what should be a hard fought game despite the graduation of Mid QB Keenan Reynolds on October 8.  After an October of watching highly-ranked teams, we will see No. 22 Michigan State for the third year in a row when they visit Penn State on November 26…A lot more preseason stuff to build leading up to our start 80 days from now.  C’mon back!

LJ Scott (#3)  returns for the Spartans at RB this season when we see them visit Happy Valley.