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Dickens Dazzles, WCU Football Outlasts Bulldogs
The WCU Catamount football team left Charleston with a 45-38 win over The Citadel Bulldogs on Saturday thanks to, once again, phenomenal play from record-breaking QB Taron Dickens. This is the 5th straight win for the surging Catamounts. Dickens went 28/33 passing, with 369 yards, 5 TDs, and his first interception of the season. Let’s take a second and look at what Dickens stats would look like if he had played a full season. As of right now, Dickens has gone 159/199 passing, good for 1976 yards, 22 TDs, and 1 interception, with a 79.9 completion percentage. This is good for the 4th most passing yards and the 2nd most passing TDs in the FCS. If we take his per-game stats and use those to fill in the blanks for the 2 FCS games Taron Dickens missed, he would have 2767 yards passing with 31 passing TDs, both of which would lead the FCS, and that’s all without adding potential numbers against Wake Forest.
This next part isn’t for Catamount fans because they already know the truth of what I am going to say. Folks, go out of your way to watch Taron Dickens at WCU while you still can. Dickens has proven he is unquestionably the best QB and best player in the entire FCS by a pretty wide margin, and will likely be playing FBS football for the remainder of his college career. I have seen NFL quarterbacks up close and personal several times in my life, and I know one when I see one. Taron Dickens is a Sunday player for sure.
The score on Saturday was a bit closer than the game itself, as the Catamounts could have scored again late in the game but didn’t. After Saturday’s contest, the Catamounts now hold the 2nd best passing offense in the country, behind only Monmouth, a top 10 team. The defense once again held its own. giving up only 310 total yards of offense to The Citadel Bulldogs. The Catamount defense did not force a turnover for the first time since facing Wofford 2 weeks ago.
The Catamounts are on a bye this week, but will then hit the road again for the second leg of their 2 game road trip, as the Cats from Cullowhee head out to Chattanooga to the Mocs at Finley Stadium at 4pm EST on November 1st on ESPN+. The Mocs are coming off a thrilling comeback against SoCon rival ETSU, where starting QB Camden Orth threw for 3 TD passes in the final 7 minutes to knock off the Buccaneers. Enjoy the bye week, and make sure you tune in next week for WCU vs UTC.
We need to have a conversation about the FCS Top 25 polls that get circulated every week. Every single one has massive fundamental flaws that prevent each and every single one from being legitimate ranking metrics, from a mathematics perspective. The Coaches poll has a longstanding problem that is shared by the FBS coaches poll, and that’s that coaches don’t actually vote in the poll. It is almost always done by a GA or an assistant, and if its actually done by the coach, that coach usually votes in favor of whatever might help their own teams strength of record.
The Stats Perform top 25 has a really nasty habit of undervaluing teams outside of the MVFC and Big Sky. Teams like 5-2 NC Central and 4-3 SC State remain unranked despite having equal or better records than several PWI schools that are ranked. Teams like 5-3 Western and 5-3 Duquesne, both undefeated in conference play, remain unranked.
Then there are folks like Redshirt Sports, who see an inherent problem with the two aforementioned rankings, but instead of actually trying to solve those problems, are for more concerned with being seen and noticed than actually being right. I want to be perfectly clear, I am not making any accusations of any kind against any of these top 25 rankings, and most of this is just bluster and banter from a fan’s perspective. I am simply someone that has spent my entire life studying biostatistics that is pointing out data driven discrepancies and deficiencies in the rankings.
I also want to add that the overwhelming majority of the people voting in all 3 of the polls I mentioned above that I have spoken to have all told me that they watch only a small handful of games each weekend. Myself? I watch between 20-30 games on Saturday, and then another 20-30 on Sunday across the FBS and FCS at the top 25 level. Why? I believe that if you didn’t watch the games, you are not an informed voter.
My point in saying all this is that while it would be great for the program if Western was ranked, everyone in the country knows that this team should be ranked in the top 15, and likely would be had Dickens not missed the first 3 games. For folks like the FCS subreddit to continue to try and discredit both Western and the SoCon at every turn is laughable and lacks any data-driven support.
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