The Cult of I-AA: Chart Toppers
Scott Garner, Cult of I-AA columnist
I-AA.org
9/8/2004
The question has been posed before, usually on team message
boards: Who is the greatest I-AA team of all time?
Inevitably, where the question is
posted casts great influence on the answer that was given.
Go to the Southern Connection, home of all things Georgia
Southern, and the list usually went something like GSU 89,
GSU 99, GSU 86, GSU 87, GSU 2000, GSU 90. Post the same
question on eGriz, the place where Montana fans go to chew
the fat, and the answer was almost always UM 95, UM 96, UM
2001, UM 2000. Sometimes the order changed (can UM 96 really
be a better team as I-AA runner-up than UM 2001 was as I-AA
champ?), but the dominant school usually remained the same.
In other words, you don't ask Mia Wallace which restaurant
makes the best milkshake while she's sitting at Jackrabbit
Slim's and expect to get an unbiased answer.
So, several weeks ago, I posed the
question in my very first column for I-AA.org. Typically,
fans of I-AA schools with championship heritage have emailed
their alma mater's top squads. But a few fans of I-AA in
general have also called in some more "unbiased"
nominations. Overall, we have a consensus of about 15 teams
that keep coming up again and again.
Now before anyone gets too excited,
I'm not going to crown a top I-AA team of all time in
today's column. Nope. Today I'm just stirring up the
schizzle a little bit with a preliminary list. I'm
also setting down a couple of rules and clearing up one
troubling issue.
First, the ground rules. Since I'm
the one writing the column, I'm the one who gets to make the
rules. If you don't like them, you can challenge by writing
me at garner@I-AA.org. Otherwise, can it. FIRST RULE:
Dynasty teams get a head start on the list's top spots. Any
team that made multiple championship appearances in a
five-year span are considered dynasties. This puts
Delaware's reigning championship team in a hole to begin
with, because history has yet to reflect on them. Sorry,
Hens, you'll probably be relegated outside of the top five.
Should Delaware win a second I-AA championship (or at least
make the finals), then I will immediately revisit the
all-time greatest list after the title game in Chattanooga
and adjust Delaware's finish accordingly. The reason dynasty
teams get a boost is because they had to sustain a level of
excellence over the five-year period--a tough task in I-AA,
where scholarships (and thus, depth) are reduced. For
Youngstown State to make four straight title game
appearances (1991-1994) and win three titles suggests talent
from top to bottom unmatched by UMass in 1998, when they won
a single title, then were gone altogether from the playoffs
by 2000. SECOND RULE: This is not a tournament. We
are not asking if the 1983 Southern Illinois team could beat
Montana's 1995 squad. You can't put teams in a time machine
and you can't impose limitations faced by teams from one era
on teams from another. THIRD RULE: Throw out margin
of victory in the playoffs. Internet Guys (the ones who live
for this kind of thing--and you'll be the topic of a future
column) like to brag how their teams cut through the
playoffs like Led Zeppelin through a throng of groupies.
Playoff fields have had varying degrees of difficulty and
playoff draws have left teams with tougher (or easier) roads
to the championship. Oh, yeah, the playoffs enter into the
equation, but not always the way you would like.
This list is starting to look like
it'll be a bit arbitrary, huh?
The greatest I-AA team of all time
is going to be determined the good, old-fashioned way: by
arguing about it. Like fans in a sports bar, we'll haggle
over positioning on the list. I'll get other writers and
experts to weigh in. I'll scour message boards. I'll create
secondary lists, like "Best team to fail to advance to the
I-AA championship game." And in a few weeks, I'll start
counting down the top five, one per week, until announcing
the Grand Pooh-Bah of I-AA teams.
And it won't be Marshall 1996.
A bone of contention
The 1996 Thundering Herd has gotten
plenty of virtual votes from the Internet crowd as the best
I-AA team of all time. But the team was I-A the next year,
with no transition period in which they were playoff
ineligible. Florida Atlantic and Florida International may
be great I-AA teams this year, but they won't muddy up the
playoffs since they are on their way to I-A. Also, Marshall
was actually stockpiling players for the move to I-A, a
practice uncovered by the NCAA. Although the infraction report only details one I-AA year (1996),
head coach Bob Pruitt "reported that employment of
nonqualifiers by the athletics representative was an
established practice by the time he took over as head
football coach in 1996," meaning Marshall had been able to
stockpile players for the move to I-A even before 1996. Puts
a tarnish on the 1996 Marshall team, don't it? I also
contend that there have been better I-AA teams than 1996
Marshall anyway. But I digress. With their dynasty points
taken away, there's no way for MU to be Numero Uno.
The qualifiers
Here is the initial list of teams to
be considered for the I-AA greatest of all time award. They
are in historical order, from most recent to oldest.
2003 Delaware Blue Hens (14-1), 2002
Western Kentucky Hilltoppers (12-3), 2001 Montana Grizzlies
(14-1), 1999 Georgia Southern Eagles (13-2), 1998 UMass
Minutemen (12-3), 1996 Marshall Thundering Herd (15-0), 1996
Montana Grizzlies (14-1), 1995 Montana Grizzlies (13-2),
1994 Youngstown State Penguins (14-0-1), 1991 Youngstown
State (12-3), 1989 Georgia Southern (15-0), 1988 Furman
(13-2), 1985 Georgia Southern (13-2), 1983 Southern Illinois
Salukis (13-1), 1982 Eastern Kentucky Colonels (13-0), 1979
Eastern Kentucky (11-2)
Those are your choices. Fifteen I-AA
national champions and one I-AA runner-up. Two repeaters,
Eastern Kentucky and Youngstown State. Two three-peaters,
Montana and Georgia Southern. In my first column, I asked
Cult members to write in with teams they thought belonged on
the list. Now I want you to tell me this: who isn't good
enough to rank in the I-AA all-time elite? Again, I need
some reasoning. We'll start voting the unworthy off the
island immediately. The address again, for those who don't
want to scroll up, is garner@I-AA.org.
Harsh beat-downs of the week
Delaware opened its defense of the
I-AA crown with a loss to New Hampshire, not exactly the way
the Blue Hens wanted to start the season. While it hardly
qualifies as a beat-down, per se, the sheer surprise of
seeing the No. 1 team in the nation go down in week one,
compounded by New Hampshire's 4-7 record a year ago, makes
this a candidate for this section of the column.
Appalachian State, long known for
giving I-A teams fits, received the I-A beat-down of the
week from Wyoming, 53-7. Ouch. If you want to see the
subtext behind this score, look no further than the
Mountaineers' shiny new offense, a one-back, no-huddle
affair. Any team that runs such an offense in today's
college football, particularly at the I-AA level, should
seriously think about checking their head coach /offensive
coordinator into a rehabilitation facility. Rather than a
run-and-shoot, this is a chuck-and-duck. It gives teams no
opportunity to control the clock, which is desperately
important when playing a team with 22 more scholarships.
Wyoming held the ball for 16 more minutes than
Appalachian--that's more than a full quarter that App State
didn't get to even touch the ball. The Mountaineers should
stick to the formula that has served them so well:
smash-mouth football on both sides of the line of scrimmage.
Give 'em a Parcells
A little while back I talked about
Bill Parcells as the model all football coaches should look
to when devising game strategy. This week, I hand out my
first series of Parcells--awards to coaches who got it
right!
This week, give a Parcells to
Montana head coach Bobby Hauck. The Grizzlies broke a 13-13
tie with an 11-play, 70 yard drive, the kind that would warm
Bill Parcells' heart, as it does mine. Despite getting
pushed around in the first half, Maine eventually won the
battle of possession time, sticking with the running game
(38 attempts) and making those two stats add up to a win
over Maine.
Give the week's biggest Parcells to
New Hampshire coach Sean McDonnell. The Wildcats knocked off
the defending I-AA champions by dominating time of
possession and playing great defense. New Hampshire had the
ball for almost 12 minutes longer than Delaware and fed
running back R.J. Harvey the ball 32 times in the game. If
this was the Bills-Giants Super Bowl, then Harvey was Otis
Anderson.
Scott's Top 25
After a tumultuous week of I-AA
football, I pondered the new rankings with a couple of
questions in mind. 1) Just how far do you drop a defending
champion after an opening-week loss to an unranked I-AA
opponent? 2) How much is a "moral victory" against a I-A
team worth in the polls? The answers turned out to be 1)
nine spots, but not out of the top 10 and 2) As many as 11
places for Western Kentucky (27-13 losers to Kansas State)
and four spots for Georgia Southern (48-28 losers to
Georgia).
Here is my Sports Network I-AA
ballot for the first week of the regular season, followed by
the team's record and their position in respect to my
preseason poll.
1. Montana (1-0) up 1
2. Furman (1-0) up 1
3. S. Illinois (1-0) up 1
4. Wofford (0-0) up 1
5. McNeese (1-0) up 3
6. Villanova (1-0) up 1
7. Colgate (0-0) down 1
8. Ga. Southern (0-1) up 4
9. Delaware (0-1) down 8
10. N. Arizona (0-1) up 1
11. W. Kentucky (0-1) up 9
12. N. Iowa (0-1) down 3
13. W. Illinois (0-1) unchanged
14. Maine (0-1) unchanged
15. Montana State (0-0) unchanged
16. Lehigh (1-0) up 2
17. Eastern Kentucky (0-0) up 2
18. Jacksonville State (1-0) up 3
19. Northern Colorado (1-0) up 4
20. Penn (0-0) up 3
21. Nwestern State (0-1) down 11
22. UMass (1-0) New
23. Nicholls State (1-0) New
24. Idaho State (0-1) up 1
25. Appalachian State (0-1) down 8
Itinerary
Home sweet home this week for the
High Priest of I-AA as Georgia Southern takes on Johnson C.
Smith, a Division II opponent. The Golden Bulls have lost
their first two games to DII opponents by a combined score
of 101-14. Georgia Southern just hung 28 points on the
Georgia Bulldogs. Like we used to say on drinking nights in
college: "Go ugly early."
Games I'd like to see: Eastern
Kentucky at Appalachian State; Northern Colorado at Maine;
Colgate at UMass; Northern Arizona at Stephen F. Austin.
Looks like the top matchups are back in the Eastern time
zone this week.
Cult Count
Schools with more than one team on
the "All time great" list: five
Total win-loss record of the
"all-time greatest" nominees: 211-23-1 (.898)
Average change in Scott's poll
ballot: 2.72 places
Quintin Tarantino references
(cumulative): two.
Over/under on number of Marshall
emails complaining about lockout from "All time greatest":
22
Time of lost productivity
daydreaming about rock groupies: 14 minutes
Until next week, don't share the
secret handshake. |
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