Philadelphia, PA (SportsNetwork.com) – There are no mulligans in college football, so a lot of FCS teams are staring at 0-1 records courtesy of FBS opponents last week.<\/p>\n
FBS programs are supposed to beat FCS teams from the lower half of Division I. It’s just that the FCS didn’t put up such a good fight, going 2-44 in the first week of the season.<\/p>\n
In contrast, the FCS won eight of 31 meetings on the opening week of action last season.<\/p>\n
FCS teams hope for a little redemption on Saturday, with 29 more games on tap against the FBS.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most high-profile matchup is second-ranked Eastern Washington from the Big Sky Conference going across the state to Seattle to face coach Chris Peterson and the Washington Huskies (1-0). The Eagles, the only 2-0 team in college football, have 53 players on their roster who hail from the Puget Sound area.<\/p>\n
The two programs have met only once previously, when Washington held on for a 30-27 win in 2011.<\/p>\n
A year ago, Eastern Washington beat a Pac-12 opponent for the first time, opening the season with a 49-46 win at Oregon State.<\/p>\n
“We’re not really looking at a label of what conference they play in or how many scholarships they have or how fans they’re gonna (have),” EWU coach Beau Baldwin said. “We’re looking at the film of, well, here’s their 11 guys on ‘D,’ here’s their 11 guys on ‘O,’ here’s what they do on special teams. That’s just how we look at it. We always have.”<\/p>\n
Four other ranked FCS teams are at FBS opponents on Saturday. Seventh-ranked McNeese State will make its season debut at Nebraska (1-0), No. 15 Sam Houston State (1-1) visits LSU (1-0), No. 17 Richmond (1-0) travels to Virginia (0-1) and No. 22 Towson (0-1) heads to West Virginia (0-1).<\/p>\n
The Citadel (0-1) will travel to Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee to take on Jameis Winston and Florida State (1-0). It marks the sixth straight season in which the defending FBS champion will play an FCS team.<\/p>\n
It’s also the first time The Citadel will take on the top-ranked team in the FBS. Previously, the highest-ranked team the Bulldogs played was No. 3 Florida in both 1998 and 2008.<\/p>\n
Other FCS-FBS games on the schedule: Western Illinois (1-0) at Wisconsin (0-1), Howard (0-1) at Rutgers (1-0), Stony Brook (0-1) at Connecticut (0-1), South Carolina State (0-1) at Clemson (0-1), Sacramento State (1-0) at California (1-0), Missouri State (1-0) at Oklahoma State (0-1), VMI (0-1) at Bowling Green (0-1), Eastern Kentucky (1-0) at Miami-Ohio (0-1), Nicholls (0-1) at Arkansas (0-1), Wagner (1-0) at FIU (0-1) and Savannah State (0-1) at Georgia Southern (0-1).<\/p>\n
Also, Campbell (0-1) at Appalachian State (0-1), Gardner-Webb (0-1) at Wake Forest (0-1), Florida A&M (0-1) at Miami-Florida (0-1), Murray State (1-0) at Louisville (1-0), Southeast Missouri State (1-0) at Kansas (0-0), Rhode Island (0-0) at Marshall (1-0), Alcorn State (1-0) at Southern Mississippi (0-1), Northwestern State (0-1) at Baylor (1-0), Lamar (1-0) at Texas A&M (1-0), Idaho State (0-1) at Utah State (0-1), Grambling State (0-1) at Houston (0-1) and Northern Colorado (0-1) at UNLV (0-1).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Philadelphia, PA (SportsNetwork.com) – There are no mulligans in college football, so a lot of FCS teams are staring at 0-1 records courtesy of FBS opponents last week. FBS programs are supposed to beat FCS teams from the lower half of Division I. It’s just that the FCS didn’t put up such a good fight, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[243],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ncaa-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23104,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23103\/revisions\/23104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}