Birds picked 5th

[Birdfan 4Life]

http://goredbirds.com/watch/?Archive=3267&type=Archive

"5th?!?? they picked you 5th?
They've done this before, they made this mistake before.
Last time they made this mistake, we went to the National Championship" - Brock Spack

Man, Coach Spack really can make you want football season to get here...excited, 29 more days!

 

[fourthandshort]

I love this sh-t.

For perspective, Spack said in August 2013, it was going to be an up and down year .. and boy was he right .. but he and his staff righted the ship after very rocky start in 2013, finishing 4-4 in MVFC games .. 5-6 overall.

Just one year later in August 2014, he had a sh-t eating grin all of August after we got picked 6th by MVFC coaches/writers ... yada yada yada ...

In August 2015 .. we finally got the love we deserved .. though it end earlier than we hoped in quarter finals.

2016 also went about as planned except for losing 3 winnable regular games; then lost our only playoff game on road against top 12 team by 7 .. on 2 special teams gaffes, or we would have advanced to round of 16 in a down year.

Here we are in 2017 ... Didn't see any video of this yet, just the audio from this Next Step teaser. I'm thinking Spack isn't sporting a sh-t eating grin his time around .. he might be a tad bit bothered.

Here we come again MVFC ... oh, and thanks for the 5th place vote of confidence .. trust me, it can only help.

 

[fourthandshort]

Someone suggested on another thread that we need a t-shirt for 2017 rallying cry regarding the NDSU game. Not sure I like the idea of looking that far forward for a single game.

But I like the idea of a 2017 rally cry t-shirt ... I think we need a Redbird t-shirt that says simply: " 5th ?!? They picked you 5th ?!? " .. players can wear it as undershirt all season.

 

[BEAT THE BISON]

Yeah Fourth, Like that Tee Shirt Idea..............

Practices seem to be going well, cant wait for Sept 2nd Tailgate, Spack Bobblehead, Cheerleaders, Big Red Marching Machine, Fireworks, and of course Football!!!!

And Victory over YSU, SD ST, ND ST!!!

 

[ChiRedbirdfan]

College Sports Madness has the Birds placed lower and 29th overall and does not mention any of the new players making a impact..........


http://www.collegesportsmadness.com/article/14960

nice 2016 recap and 2017 overview, including the importance of how our schedule lays out .... but one glaring omission was they did not account for 3 key transfer additions, who are very likely to shore up the RB and LB groups.

RB Markel Smith .. sat out last year due to transfer rules. If he's healthy and stayed in shape, going to be very fun watching him and James Robinson wear teams down. Both 225 lb Res who can run and punish tacklers.

LBers Horton (Juco/TCU transfer, Juco defensive player of year) and Barajas (Notre Dame Transfer, 3-4 star) .. both will have big roles on defense. Once they learn system, this group should be better than last year.

so they clearly did their homework, except for "key additions" ... difference between 3rd place and 6th place is usually 1 game .. but there just are not 5 teams in MVFC that are better than ISU ... especially with YSU and UNI expecting down years.

IMO, standing in conference is absolutely meaningless when playing FCS football even if in the best FCS conference. Either ISU is a top 10-15 team nationally (at a minimum) with a slight chance or better of winning a national championship otherwise anything else is subpar. ISU should be FBS given size/national profile of the university however the Redbird football team is a big fish in a small pond so expectations should match.

 

[fourthandshort]

College Sports Madness has the Birds placed lower and 29th overall and does not mention any of the new players making a impact..........


http://www.collegesportsmadness.com/article/14960

nice 2016 recap and 2017 overview, including the importance of how our schedule lays out .... but one glaring omission was they did not account for 3 key transfer additions, who are very likely to shore up the RB and LB groups.

RB Markel Smith .. sat out last year due to transfer rules. If he's healthy and stayed in shape, going to be very fun watching him and James Robinson wear teams down. Both 225 lb Res who can run and punish tacklers.

LBers Horton (Juco/TCU transfer, Juco defensive player of year) and Barajas (Notre Dame Transfer, 3-4 star) .. both will have big roles on defense. Once they learn system, this group should be better than last year.

so they clearly did their homework, except for "key additions" ... difference between 3rd place and 6th place is usually 1 game .. but there just are not 5 teams in MVFC that are better than ISU ... especially with YSU and UNI expecting down years.

IMO, standing in conference is absolutely meaningless when playing FCS football even if in the best FCS conference. Either ISU is a top 10-15 team nationally (at a minimum) with a slight chance or better of winning a national championship otherwise anything else is subpar. ISU should be FBS given size/national profile of the university however the Redbird football team is a big fish in a small pond so expectations should match.

Completely agree on top 10-15 expectation .. I think we are there if you accept objective ranking systems over homeristic biased polls. Here is our ranking by year using Massey / Sagarin / Massey Composite of 35+ polls:

2007: 51 / 35 / 43 .. no playoffs (4-7, pre-Spack)
2008: 77 / 78 / 75 .. no playoffs (3-8, pre-Spack)
2009: 37 / 35 / 37 .. no playoffs (6-5, year 1 for Spack)
2010: 42 / 48 / 52 .. no playoffs (6-5)
2011: 6 / 8 / 14 .. no playoffs - screwed out of playoff bid in field of 20 (7-4)
2012: 11 / 14 / 11 .. lost in round of 8 (8-3 reg season)
2013: 23 / 23 / 31 .. no playoffs (5-6)
2014: 2 / 2 / 2 .. lost finals (10-1)
2015: 5 / 2 / 3 .. lost in round of 8 (9-2)
2016: 17 / 16 / 18 .. lost in round of 16 by 7 on road to top 12 team (6-5); lost 3 winnable regular season games - win 1 of those 3 and we would have been top 15 for sure.

Not interested in rehashing why we aren't or should be FBS .. other than, we're on a good track the last 7 years. Nothing anyone can do to change what happened the 50-150 years prior to 2010.