#9 The Independents

 

  1. ind16Brigham Young University – Cougars – 9-3: The Cougars will field a good team again this year, but trips to Utah, Michigan State, and Boise State will prove too much for them.  Yep Mountaineers, my numbers show a BYU win in Landover, but regardless of that game’s outcome BYU will do nothing to hurt its case to join the Big XII.
  2. Notre Dame University – Figting Irish – 7-5:  Notre Dame only returns 9 starters, and even with a watered down ACC schedule they won’t have to worry about being in the national title picture.  @UT, Michigan State, @NCSU, Stanford, and USC will all prove too much for them.  But, they have enough poor teams (Duke, Syracuse, & Army) to keep them above .500.
  3. West Point – Black Knights of the Hudson – 3-9: Sadly Army shows no ability to reach a point where they can play reasonable football.  If it wasn’t for FCS schools and getting lucky with some teams just being worse than Army they’d be running up winless seasons galore.
  4. University of Massachusetts – Minutemen – 1-11: While the Minutemen are not Big XII expansion candidates they are sure hoping for vacancies in the AAC or CUSA that they can fill to come out of it.  Other than that they are going to a very futile strategy of playing multiple P5, and some better G5 teams for paydays.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

17 COMMENTS