Parity – thy name is not college football
Steveo’s Salvos July 2018
Ok fellow college football fans, with less than two months until kickoff, we have to start getting focused here at Collegefootballfan.com. We’re “bearing” down already on our opener on August 30 when we plan to see the Maine Black Bears host New Hampshire’s Wildcats in a Colonial Athletic Association FCS tussle! First trip to Orono, Maine, home of the Black Bears and the first of three consecutive days of college football in New England to start the 2018 season. We’re starting to salivate, but I have to calm down a little. As I’m anxious to start reviewing and reporting on more, I have to leave on a work trip overseas that gets me back in mid-July. Work allows me to buy my game tickets. My long flights will get me caught up on some of the other preseason pubs I still have to review, but I have gotten started peruing some key periodicals already…
The UNH Wildcats will be looking for their 15th straight FCS playoff berth when we see them open our 2018 season at Maine, our first college game in the Pine Tree State.
New England? We aren’t seeing the Patriots play!
Some fans might react, “Three college games in New England- big deal!” Reading the preseason reports on-line and in the magazines, of course we’re all reading about the continuing dominance of a few major programs winning year in and year out with no end in sight. We basically know that the CFP brackets will most likely include combinations with Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, and Oklahoma among the final four if not all of them, for instance. As we’ve pointed out in the past here, this is happening not only in the FBS, but look at all the other divisions, too. North Dakota State has won five of the last six FCS Championships. Mount Union dominates D-3 with 13 national titles since 1993. From 1996-2017, they’ve played in the championship game 19 times. From 2006-2014. the Purple Raiders battled the Wisconsin -Whitewater Warhawks in the title game nine times with UW-W winning six. D-2 titles seem to be won in streaks. NW Missouri State is the most recent having garnered three championship in the last five years. The argument can be made that there is no parity in college football at any level. We believe it comes down to three things: head coaching, developing a talented coaching staff, and recruiting. The first provides the momentum to the second to the third. Look at Nick Saban, Dabo Swinney, and Urban Meyer as your prime examples of perennial winning head coaches. However, when a HC leaves and can provide some continuity with the former program by leaving behind key elements of the coaching staff, that dominance can continue. Mike Riley took over for Bobbie Stoops at Oklahoma. It may be one year so far, but pay close attention despite a 54-48 CFP loss to Georgia last season. The Sooners continue where Stoops left off. Saban defeated former assistant Kirby Scott of Georgia last season in that dramatic comeback. If and when Saban retires, Kirby Scott could be back at Alabama. Don’t bet against it. At North Dakota State, Craig Bohl left for Wyoming after winning three consecutive titles, but his assistant Chris Klieman continued his ways since with a 54-6 record garnering three more titles while losing in 2016 in the semi-final to eventual champ, James Madison. After 11 national D-3 titles won by Larry Kehres at Mount Union, he handed the reigns over to his son and assistant Vince in 2013. In the four years since taking over, the younger Kehres led the Raiders to three title games, winning two of the last three. Since Lance Leipold left Wisconsin-Whitewater to try to breathe some life into the Buffalo Bulls program ( watch what he does there this year), the Warhawks only made the FCS playoffs a year after and none since. There is a methodology for dominance in college football. It starts with finding the right head coach at the right time, hiring and developing assistants, and building a reputation that makes the best of the best players want to play for your program…
HC Dabo Swinney reloads his offense with more quarterback talent to get ready for the 2018 season.
Why they play all these games
We at CFF.com don’t let this enlightenment discourage us from the game of college football. Despite having different rooting interests than the fans of the top programs, we take every game we see during the course of the season as the reason to see two teams play. Neither may be headed for a national championship, but we enjoy the action and the competition that takes place during the course of any game whether we see Ohio State at Penn State (September 29), or New Hampshire at Maine when our season opens up. For that matter, we’ll even enjoy Western New England at Springfield in a D-3 clash the night after our opener, and if you can believe this, we look forward to that one also. Two local schools located in the same little city coming off winning seasons a year ago. Who will win that game? The 10-1 host Price or the 8-3 Golden Bears? The Pride won last season’s opener between the two, 35-21. Both won bids to the D-3 playoffs at the end of last season. Competition – playing to win. That’s what we enjoy about the games we go to, and why we continue to go on our quest “to see ’em all.” This will be the second of the three games we’ll attend in New England before we finish up with UMass at Boston College. For us at CFF.com, the competitiveness displayed on the field during any game we see is what college football is all about. Let’s get started!
Soph RB AJ Dillon looking for room here in the 2017 New Era Pinstripe Bowl against Iowa, returns to Boston College after ACC Freshman of the Year honors with 1,589 rushing yards. BC will open our FBS season against instate rival UMASS.