Leatherneck Nation

Here we are then...Week 1 of the 2017 college football season. As usual, here's my usual rundown of what's happening elsewhere around the MVFC and other games of interest:

8/13 at 6:00 PM - Eastern Illinois at Indiana State (ESPN3)
8/31 at 7:00 PM - Duquesne at South Dakota State (ESPN3)
9/2 at 11:00 AM - Missouri State at Missouri (SEC Network)
9/2 at 12:00 PM - Youngstown State at Pitt (ACC Network)
9/2 at 2:30 PM - Mississippi Valley State at North Dakota State (ESPN3)
9/2 at 6:00 PM - South Dakota at Drake (Drake online streaming, paid)
9/2 at 6:30 PM - Butler at Illinois State (ESPN3)
9/2 at 7:00 PM - Northern Iowa at Iowa State (Iowa State online streaming, paid)

For more details and info about the MVFC games, I have my Week 1 MVFC preview up at the The FCS Wedge: http://thefcswedge.com/mvfc/mvfc-week-1-preview/

And outside the MVFC:
9/2 at 6:00 PM - UMass at Coastal Carolina (ESPN3)
9/2 at 10:00 PM - Northern Arizona at Arizona (Pac12 Network)

Other Week 1 MVFC Scores:

Eastern Illinois beat Indiana State 22-20. Attendance at INSU = 4,670.

South Dakota State beat Duquesne 51-13. Attendance at SDSU = 12,218.

Missouri beat Missouri State 72-43. Attendance at Mizzou = 50,131.

Pittsburgh beat Youngstown State 28-21 in overtime. Attendance at Pitt = 40,012.

North Dakota State beat Mississippi Valley State 72-7. Attendance at NDSU = 18,502.

And ESPN3 is really sucking today, at least for me. Good one going on between ECU and JMU right now but good luck getting a hold of it.

sealhall74 wrote:And ESPN3 is really sucking today, at least for me. Good one going on between ECU and JMU right now but good luck getting a hold of it.

ECU and JMU was about the only game I didn't have much trouble on. Everything else was glitchy and had problems.

That was the FCS over FBS upset that wasn't actually. JMU was favored by about a TD most places.


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South Dakota beat Drake 77-7. Attendance at Drake = 3,332.

Illinois State beat Butler 45-0. Attendance at ILSU = 10,840.

Iowa State beat Northern Iowa 42-24. Attendance at Iowa State = 61,500.

Looks like in most cases, the MVFC outperformed what I thought they would. I thought UNI would stay a bit closer to Iowa State and that Indiana State would end up narrowly beating Eastern Illinois, but for the most part, the MVFC teams that won, won by quite a bit more than I thought they would, and the teams that lost, were a lot closer than I thought it would be (I'm looking at you & ).

Outside of the MVFC, in the "other teams we might be interested in this season" category...

Coastal Carolina got ahead first and never let UMass get back ahead of them (they did tie it up a couple of times though), winning 38-28. Attendance at CCU was 13,274.

Northern Arizona (our opponent next week) is playing Arizona, so the game really just started around 10 PM our time. It's currently halftime, with Arizona up 34-14. If you are still up and want to follow along, you can here: http://www.espn.com/college-football/ga ... =400935251
(I'll update this tomorrow morning when I get up and find out the final score)

Also, for anyone interested in FCS over FBS upsets:
On Thursday, Tennessee State (Ohio Valley) beat Georgia State (Sun Belt) in their first game in their new stadium (the remodeled former Turner Stadium, previously occupied by the Atlanta Braves).

James Madison beat East Carolina, 34-14 today, which wasn't really an "upset" technically, because JMU was actually the favorite to win this game (last year's national champion FCS team vs a pretty bad FBS team that went 3-9 last season)

Also, this kinda counts, Liberty (who is in the process of moving up to FBS, but is technically still FCS, I believe) beat Baylor 48-45 this evening. This is especially interesting since the AD at Liberty was the AD at Baylor who was fired for mishandling the sexual assault cases at the school involving football players.

And....I just noticed this one as I was typing this stuff up. Howard University (a FCS HBCU school that went 2-9 last season) just beat UNLV, 43-40. Apparently the spread on this one was 45 for UNLV, so this is a 48-point swing from that.
EDIT...apparently in terms of favored team and the spread, this was the largest "upset" in college football history: https://twitter.com/RJinVegas/status/904200971189755904
Someone who bet $100 on an outright win for Howard would have won $55,000 (I have not heard if anyone took that bet).

There were also some "near misses" with:
Rhode Island losing to Central Michigan 30-27 in 3 OT on Thursday.
Portland State losing to Oregon State 35-32 today (with OSU only going ahead with about a minute left in the game).
The previously mentioned Youngstown State taking Pitt to OT before falling 28-21.
Southeastern Louisiana losing to UL-Lafayette (I guess they just go by "Louisiana" now), 51-48 in a game that SELA could have won were it not for a botched 2-point conversion of their part that the Ragin' Cajuns took 98 yards back the other way. A regular XP would have tied the game at 49, but instead UL-L got the 2 points and won the game.

But you know what...no matter how they play out...college football is back!

ok, well, I didn't quite get to sleep as early as I thought I would...

Arizona whooped up on Northern Arizona, 62-24.
NAU was only down by a TD in the second quarter, 21-14, but then AZ just ramped things up.

Definitely the big surprises were YSU and MSU there offense in the 1st half against mizzou was unbelievable I watched the 1st quarter of the USD game that should be a battle to see which strength wins there running game maybe the best in the league and are run defense is the best in the league.