There was a preseason poll a few weeks ago, and then this past weekend was the first weekend with enough games to warrant a new poll. This was also the toughest week of voting, since a lot of FBS teams schedule FCS teams for the openers, so a lot of the better FCS teams opened with losses.
One thing TB has always hated about polls is when two ranked teams play each other, the team ranked a little lower loses in a close fashion and then that team plummets in the poll. This past weekend there was one FCS Top 25 matchup, between North Carolina A&T, No. 20 in the preseason, defeated Elon, No. 21 in the preseason, 24-21.
Seems like Elon should be ranked just behind NC A&T, right? TB left them separated by one spot.
Of course, if you're voting in the FCS poll, it's always a good idea to start with North Dakota State and go from there. The top five teams in the poll seem fairly clear, with North Dakota State followed by South Dakota State, James Madison, Eastern Washington and UC Davis is basically any order.
Princeton opens its season two weeks from Saturday, when it hosts Butler. The Bulldogs played their first game this past Saturday, when they lost to North Dakota State 57-10.
Princeton was ranked 24th in the preseason poll. Two other Ivy League schools, Dartmouth and Yale, were receiving votes.
Now that it's September, it's just a little more than two months until the Tigers face both of those teams, on back-to-back Saturdays. The first of them will be the Dartmouth game at Yankee Stadium on Nov. 9, and then it's Yale at Princeton on Nov. 16.
This weekend was the start of a new year of Princeton Athletics, as the women's soccer team defeated St. Joe's 1-0 and lost to Boston College 2-1. Princeton and BC are perennial NCAA tournament teams, and the Eagles are now 4-0 already.
TigerBlog was mostly focused this weekend on two Princeton Athletics stories.
The first was NFL cuts.
Princeton had six players in NFL camps heading into Saturday's 4 pm deadline for teams to get from 90 players to 53. That's a brutal situation all around, with minute differences separating the last few players yet with the difference between making it and not making it so drastic.
John Lovett, the two-time Bushnell Cup winner, was already on injured reserve with Kansas City, which gives him something of a redshirt year. The Chiefs were very high on Lovett and the versatility and intensity that he displayed at Princeton, and he was probably a lock to make the 53-man roster had he not hurt his shoulder.
As for the other five, they all got cut on Saturday, which probably was to be expected. The flip side of the NFL cut downs is that a lot changes after the deadline passes.
Seth DeValve, in his fourth NFL season, was cut by Cleveland, the only team he'd played for, and then picked up fairly quickly by Jacksonville. Record-setting Princeton wide receivers-turned-NFL tight ends Jesper Horsted (Chicago) and Stephen Carlson (Cleveland) were cut Saturday and then signed to the practice squads for their teams.
Horsted made a huge late run to almost get onto the 53-man roster. He made two great catches in the final preseason game and had eight catches in the last two games, not to mention a HEADLINE STORY on the Bears' website.
That's a pretty good picture no?
The two players who also got cut were quarterback Chad Kanoff and defensive lineman Caraun Reid, both of whom have excellent chances of finding a new team as the season starts to unfold.
The other big story from this weekend was the continuing evolution of Mike Ford into an important piece for the New York Yankees. The former Ivy League Pitcher and Player of the Year reached double figures in home runs in a very dramatic way Saturday, when he gave the team a 5-4 win over Oakland with a pinch hit home run in the bottom of the ninth:
One hand on the clutch. One foot on the throttle. pic.twitter.com/5GOp3V2MCP— New York Yankees (@Yankees) September 1, 2019
Ford now has 10 home runs in 110 at-bats, which would be around 45 in 500 at-bats.
More importantly, a player who can come off the bench with lefthanded power is a huge asset in the postseason. Maybe he's played his way onto that roster.
That could possibly get TB to even root for the Yankees. He can add them to the list, with the Browns, Bears, Jags and Chiefs.
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