The D1A Men’s College season gets underway this weekend, with Syracuse taking on the University of Buffalo in a non-conference crossover game. All told, before we get to playoffs, almost 240 games will be played between D1A teams — mostly conference games, but this also includes over 40 non-conference games or games involving teams without a conference.
All D1A Schedules By Conference
What should we expect from this season? Well, a few changes to note:
Team Movement
As outlined earlier, Iowa has moved from the Big Ten to the Heart of America in D1AA. Houston and TCU have left the Red River, while USC has moved out of the PAC conference and returned to D1AA.
However, joining D1A are SUNY Oswego, Boston College, AIC, North Texas, Navy, Grand Canyon, and Notre Dame. That makes the number of teams in the division 72. BYU has officially joined the Rocky Mountain, while Utah Valley stays in the Rocky Mountain after some speculation it might not be invited back.
Oswego, BC, and AIC join the Liberty, North Texas joins Red River, Navy is in the Mid-South (scary thought, really), GCU joins California, and Notre Dame is an independent.
Seasonality
Actually, the seasonality question really only applies to playoffs. For the regular season, conference play when they see fit. For the most part, in fact, D1A is a fall competition. Liberty, Big Ten, Rugby East, and Rocky Mountain play their entire 15s seasons in the fall.
Red River and Mid-South play in fall, winter, and spring. The Mid-South plays five of its 15 league games in the fall, or 33 percent. Last year the conference played 10 percent of its games in the fall, so it’s moving in that direction.
Only the PAC and California conferences play every league game after January 1.
Competitiveness
The competitive balance has shifted in a few places, and mostly for the better — dominant teams now have someone additional to worry about.
In Liberty, BC and AIC — especially AIC — provide competition for Iona (AIC and Iona actually played in a bowl game in 2016, in which AIC won in a comeback).
Rocky Mountain has been Colorado State or Air Force, but now an improved Air Force Academy, and BYU in there. Can Colorado State hang on? Well, the Rams have serious competition now.
Red River lost two teams that weren’t very strong, and the conference gains a very capable North Texas side. This is, top to bottom, one of the most competitive conferences. The Red River champion hasn’t, of late, been a national title (or event semifinal) contender, but that’s not what we mean here — what we mean is that the very best team in the conference and the very worst team aren’t all that drastically separated. This makes the Red River a lot of fun to watch.
The Mid-South does have national title contenders (and the defending champion) and is now even stronger with Navy joining. Life needs another opponent to worry about the Midshipmen will provide it. Same goes for Lindenwood — long the No. 2 team to Life in this conference. Now that position is certainly under threat.
Some Stats
Biggest Conference: Liberty with 20 teams.
Toughest Conference: Mid-South with last year’s No. 1, No. 3, No. 8, NO. 10, No. 17, and No. 23. That’s right — every team in the conference was ranked at the end of last season.
Smallest Conference: PAC is now at five teams, and joins Red River as the only conference to get smaller this year.
Current Conference Champion Favorites
Right, no one has played a game yet. Still … here goes:
Liberty: Iona
Big 10: Indiana
Rugby East: Penn State
Rocky Mountain: BYU
Red River: Could be anyone … Texas A&M?
Mid-South: Life
California: Saint Mary’s
PAC: Cal
Most likely to push that conference champion:
Liberty: AIC or Northeastern
Big 10: Wisconsin or Ohio State
Rugby East: Army
Rocky Mountain: Air Force? CSU? OK, really no one
Red River: Texas, LSU, Baylor, Arkansas …
Mid-South: Lindenwood … maybe Navy
California: No one. Grand Canyon could shoot to 2nd
PAC: No one. 2nd is up for grabs.