Greetings my fellow patrons of SoCon and FCS football.

I'm gonna be honest, I'm kind of disappointed. Perhaps this is because Georgia Southern and App State moved up, but I'm kind of wowed at how little buzz there is about SoCon football in the middle of August!

I'm not pointing fingers, I just find it odd that normally we have a thread that's like 8 pages long at this point debating what will happen this year. I'm not around FCS forums as much as I used to be (side effect of growing up), but it's still somewhat shocking.

Regardless, what are your expectations for your team this year? I start this thread and not a "Socon prediction thread" because I don't know enough about other teams this year.

In Wofford's case, we are really really young. Many projected OL starters for this season for-went their last year of eligibility. We only have 7 seniors on the team (5 projected defensive starters, the long-snapper, and a walk-on running back) this year, to put things in perspective. With that said, our offense was terrible last year (though I didn't believe it at the time, I was extremely wrong) and we can really only go upwards from year. It all starts at QB for the Terriers. We need find one, as not one clear candidate was established last year. Between practically 3 scrimmages (I don't think the outcome of North Greenville, UVA-Wise, and GT will be anything but one-sided) and an off week in the first 5 weeks of the year, as well as Gardner Webb who is not a traditional power by any definition, I think Wofford will have some questions answered entering into the Socon slate.

Defensively, I think we'll be solid. Perhaps we won't be as good as last year, but we have a good enough nucleus coming back to where I'm not too concerned. The Achilles would seem to be inexperience at linebacker, but that's about it. Since our offense can only go up in terms of consistency and overall quality, I think you can expect an improvement on our 5-6 record of last year.

Our schedule is also objectively weaker. No GSU or App State. 2 sub-D1 opponents (we didn't schedule this originally, Jacksonville pulled out of our scheduled game). With that said, I can't say we won't be competitive in any game except maybe Georgia Tech on opening day.

I don't think Samford will be as good offensively, transfer QB or not, as that 6th year guy was pretty legit, and if I'm not mistaken they lost some veterans. We were pretty competitive with them last year, in spite of a pedestrian offense. Furman and Chattanooga are more intimidating, but at the same time they don't have offenses built to score 1000 points on you, so I'm not exactly afraid of a blowout, thus we should compete.

I don't think we should lose to:
UVA Wise
North Greenville
VMI
or Gardner Webb (Yes, I ate lots of Crow for that one last year; regardless if the result was due to weather, looking back, our offense was terrible and I think will improve, hence, I feel good about this one)

The only team I don't feel confident in beating is Georgia Tech, simply because they have better athletes, a decent coach, and a similar system as ours. We probably won't sneak up on them.

Mercer, Western Carolina, the Citadel are teams we can or should beat. With that said, there's a big unknown factor to all of them (Mercer's existence, is Western actually improving-especially since we almost lost to them last year and have to go back to the 'whee this year, and the Citadel's new, damn-good coach), and I think it would be arrogance to count those as sure-wins, especially given the year we had last year and the youth we have this year.

In the case of Samford, Furman, and Chattanooga, I've already somewhat talked about them. It really does suck that we have to visit all of them though.

Overall, I think Wofford will easily improve their win-loss record. I think 5-6 is the most pessimistic outlook, whereas we're definitely capable talent-wise, with this schedule of being 9-2 or 10-1. Unfortunately we only play 9 games this year, so unless we get the automatic bid in the socon, we're going to have to go at least 9-2 to make the playoffs. If this were years prior I would say that we had a 85% chance of not making the playoffs.

Seeing as we have the schedule we do, I think 7-4 is a realistic prediction, while 8-3 is an optimistic one. Either way, the sky is the limit for Wofford, we have nothing to lose as expectations aren't particularly high (though not necessarily low). If we go 8-3, I would probably predict us to be the 2015 favorite.

What's your opinion on your school or team?