Originally Posted by mikebigg
Response: Ok, so other teams didn't lose players? With all due respect to the defending nat'l champs, App State...they lost Ritchie Williams who was their offensive catalyst and team leader and also Hunter, their defensive leader. Both playing pro ball or in camps. They deserve the respect of being ranked #1, but TxState deserves top 10 rankings. They made the playoffs and advanced LAST year which is more recent than some of the teams ranked ahead of them. Did Delaware and McNeese win playoff games last year? Has McNeese been in the playoffs in the past 3 seasons? Didn't they get beaten two years straight by conference member SLU? No knock on McNeese's program, but what about recent history? That's the standard you hold Grambling too. We lost to McNeese when they were heavily ranked but outside of them, we haven't lost to a 1AA since. We get criticized for our schedule but we have quality teams in our conference... check out how many you have ranked in the "others" category. At least you recognize that they are good programs. But doesn't Grambling have some players who are pre-season all-conference and all-american. Didn't 16 or these same guys not start on last year's 11 win season?
But at least it was good for conversation and dialogue. But I will leave you with this. The polls really don't matter because the championship is decided on the field. That's cool. But as I analyzed the rankings, I couldn't help but smh after the top 3. The hardest to justify being McNeese and Delaware. Two good programs but that's a serious jump for two teams that lost 4 games each and who did not participate in the playoffs. As Jafus would say: " Interesting!"