If opponents of the expanded College Football Playoff want an FCS talking point, last week’s uneventful Round of 16 went their way. If proponents of the expanded College Football Playoff want an FCS talking point, holy buckets, Friday and Saturday were fun.
In increasing order of excitement:
North Dakota State 27, Samford 9
It wasn’t a terrible game—Samford held the Bison scoreless for 28 minutes and 35 seconds, which is more than most—but by the fourth quarter, it was 24 to 0. The closest Samford came to scoring in the first three quarters was late in the first quarter, when the Bulldogs attempted a 34-yard field goal only to see it blocked. Meanwhile, North Dakota State broke through, the way overpowering physical teams tend to break through: They started scoring on every single drive. And most of them were long. After Samford stuffed Cam Miller on its own 34 early in the second quarter on a fourth down play, the Bison’s next five drives went: touchdown (12 plays, 69 yards), field goal (3 plays, 23 yards, end of half), touchdown (7 plays, 82 yards), touchdown (12 plays ,63 yards), field goal (9 plays, 71 yards). A second-half beatdown. The kind of thing we expect from NDSU.
Montana State 55, William & Mary 7
Here’s where it got a little fun.
Sometimes, blowouts are boring. Sometimes, Taco Dowler runs a punt back to make it 55-0 in the third quarter while the kids from the nice school in Virginia look bewildered with temperatures in the teens in Bozeman. This is why Kevin Warren said last week that he wants CFP quarterfinals at home stadiums. I have as much Michigan disgust as the next guy, but I wouldn’t mind seeing what they’d do to LSU this December at the Big House.
It was a ridiculous blowout, and enough of one to make these semifinals a lot more interesting. Especially given what happened the next day in Brookings.
South Dakota State 42, Holy Cross 21
This was the second-most fun game I’ve watched all season, and only because I got to watch so much of Sacramento State vs. Incarnate Word on Friday night.
Bob Chesney, Holy Cross head coach, is about to be a rising star. He’s rising already. He’s just missing the star part. In three places as a head coach, he has a 104-42 win-loss record, and if you take out the first two years at each of the stops, the record is a silly 73-17. The guy wins everywhere he went, and Saturday’s game demonstrated why.
In the regular season against the Patriot League, and even last week against New Hampshire, Holy Cross could win by being the better team. And to be fair, the Saders did give South Dakota State hell in the trenches, keeping the Jackrabbit pressure off Matthew Sluka for three quarters (creating a wild collection of successful broken plays in the process) and stuffing SDSU’s offense with backs against the wall three times in a row to open the game. But it wasn’t the trenches where Holy Cross had a chance to win. It was on the wild stuff.
After Sluka scampered to a 56-yard, lead-taking touchdown on Holy Cross’s first drive, Chesney immediately broke out a surprise onside kick. Facing a fourth and one with a 7-6 lead at the SDSU 27, Chesney dialed up a jump pass from his halfback that left Sean Morris strolling into the endzone with an eight-point lead. Holy Cross was not going to beat South Dakota State by being the better team. But had the onside worked as well as the jump pass, and had Sluka not been intercepted late in the first half, and had that interception not been returned for a touchdown, Holy Cross might have won this game. It’s a lot of ifs, yes. But when you’re as big an underdog as Holy Cross was, you have to put yourself in position to win with ifs. Without ifs, you’re going to lose.
South Dakota State? Disappointing, to be sure. But they came through when they needed to, and they played to win, not to grab any vanity points.
Incarnate Word 66, Sacramento State 63
This was the best. In the shadow of U.S. Route 50, G.J. Kinne and the Incarnate Word Cardinals took on previously undefeated Sacramento State, and, well, the score does say a lot. The game was already high-scoring entering the fourth quarter. Then, the teams combined for 59 more points. UIW scored on multiple 60+ yard runs and a 55-yard fumble return. Sacramento State got back into it with a surprise onside. At 1:13 AM personal time I texted my brother, “Sac State’s run 100 plays and there are still four more minutes.”
I hadn’t seen the UIW offense in action since 2018, and so I did not understand how “hurry up” hurry up could be. That was the fastest offense I’ve ever seen. If Kinne’s bringing that to Texas State, there’s going to be plenty of fun in the Sun Belt.
**
Here’s where the week leaves Movelor:
| Team | Movelor |
| South Dakota State | 20.7 |
| North Dakota State | 18.9 |
| Montana State | 18.0 |
| Incarnate Word | 15.3 |
Here’s where the week leaves Movelor’s probabilities:
| Team | Make Championship | Win Championship |
| South Dakota State | 65.5% | 37.7% |
| North Dakota State | 67.7% | 31.2% |
| Montana State | 34.5% | 18.2% |
| Incarnate Word | 32.3% | 12.9% |
That leaves the Movelor spreads for this weekend’s games at:
- North Dakota State -6.6 vs. Incarnate Word
- South Dakota State -5.7 vs. Montana State
The core question is going to be whether Movelor is experiencing a little breakdown on the fringe, with NDSU and SDSU such titans that it’s hard to measure them. But if Holy Cross can give the Jacks a game, the team who just won by 48 against the CAA Champion should be able to hold its own, right? And what a stylistic clash the city of Fargo’s about to see.
