Submitted by Libertine
Charleston Southern @ North Dakota State (Saturday, Aug. 27th – 7:30pm – ESPN)
Well, college football is finally back as Charleston Southern travels to North Dakota State to kick off the first game in the country of the 2016 season. Oddly enough, it will not be the first game to kick off outside the country as Hawai’i and Cal will line up against each other in Sydney, Australia the night before. However, for the sake of discussion as it pertains to FCS, this is the primo inaugural catalytic event that football fans across the country have been waiting for. Granted, the ESPN broadcast will more than likely quickly devolve into the commentators talking about Alabama or Baylor for three hours but the important thing is that we will be witnessing live meaningful football. Indeed, our long national nightmare is over.
Seeing as how I’m writing this from the Big South perspective, I’m not going to hash out NDSU here. No offense intended toward the Bison but that’s something that’s already been done to death on AGS and, by now, everybody in the world of football knows about NDSU, they of the five straight national titles and the breeding ground of this year’s 2nd overall draft pick in the NFL. Rather, I’m going to come at this from the viewpoint of a Big South watcher and a person who is roughly familiar with the Charleston Southern program. There aren’t many of us, comparatively speaking, so I’ll try to provide the best insight I can.
Importance — Is this the most important game in CSU football history? That’s hard to say. There have certainly been more meaningful games in terms of implications for the season and most of those have come recently. Beating Coastal and Liberty in 2015 meant CSU’s first win over a top-ranked program as well as CSU’s first and only outright conference title, respectively. Beating The Citadel in the playoffs marked CSU’s first postseason win and the first time they had beaten the same school twice in one season. Still, none of those games were carried live on the ESPN flagship channel. While it’s unlikely that a game played in August will have vital impact on the overall arc of the season, there have never been more eyes on the CSU program than there will be this Saturday. How often does a tiny religiously-affiliated liberal arts university nestled in the back corner of North Charleston, South Carolina get a chance to put itself in front of millions on a national stage? Still, it’s just one football game with a lot more to be played after it. Yes, the game is of massive import to Charleston Southern University as a whole and to the relatively small number of people who call themselves Buc fans. Can the CSU players and coaches put that pressure aside to just play the game? We’ll find that out for certain on Saturday.
CSU history – This game will mark a number of firsts for the CSU program. This is obviously the first time that CSU will play on the ESPN flagship and will also be their first meeting with NDSU. On top of that, this will be CSU’s first meeting with any team from the Missouri Valley Football Conference. On top of that, this will be CSU’s first meeting with any FCS team hailing from west of the Mississippi River. In fact, aside from two trips to Hawai’i, the only game “out west” that CSU has ever played was a 2013 visit to Colorado that came about because that year’s CU-Fresno State game was cancelled due to flooding. In those three games, (granted they were all three FBS paycheck games) CSU was outscored 175-27. This will also be CSU’s first game indoors since a 55-7 loss at ETSU back in the year 2000. That said, CSU broke in a number of firsts for their program last season (first outright conference title, first top 10 ranking, first home playoff game, first playoff win, etc.,) and they’ll try to continue that trend going into 2016.
What does CSU have to do to beat NDSU? – Pray. No, seriously, pray. The Bucs will need some genuine supernatural ‘Angels in the Outfield’-type machinations to win this and a heaping dose of dysentery sweeping through the NDSU locker room wouldn’t hurt either.
On a less ethereal plane, CSU doesn’t match up well up front on either side of the ball. However, CSU is used to this and has built their team accordingly. Their defense is designed to rely on speed and aggression to the ball as opposed to any semblance of girth. On the ground, the Bucs will try to minimize their size disadvantage by getting more hats to the football than the Bison can block. You’ll see a lot of pre-snap movement from the CSU linebackers, shifting gaps in order to confuse the calls along the NDSU offensive line. You’ll also see a lot stunting along the defensive line mixed in with a ton of blitzes. I mean to say that CSU will blitz a lot. The Luftwaffe didn’t blitz London in 1940 like the CSU defense is going to blitz this Saturday. They’ll send guys from every conceivable angle and position, leaving whole areas of the field undefended and counting on the athleticism of their back four to cover what will, inevitably, be thrown over the heads of their front seven. Against a young team – even one the size of NDSU’s – that would be a passable plan but it’s unlikely to faze a group as seasoned as the Bison. On offense, CSU has to – as in, absolutely must – get big plays. Jamey Chadwell’s leadership style is laden with motivational gimmicks that include everything from dressing up like Bear Bryant to having the word “CHIP” printed on the shoulders of last year’s CSU team t-shirts. For good or bad, the Bucs team feeds on that attitudinal energy. They play best when they’re playing well and nothing fuels that aggressively passive-aggression like big plays. On the other hand, nothing starves them like getting bogged down offensively and falling behind. For CSU to be effective on offense, they have to keep NDSU guessing and, when the Bison guess wrong, capitalize in a big way. On special teams, CSU’s kicker has a medium-sized leg at best so their most potent weapon is Darius Hammond returning kickoffs. Unfortunately, if you’re returning kickoffs, it usually means that the other team has just scored and you need to catch up. Still, those kickoff returns can and have provided the big play energy I alluded to earlier.
Best case scenario for CSU – The game turns into a shootout and the Bucs score last. The ESPN cameras capture the CSU sideline having a lot of fun.
Worst case scenario for CSU – The Bison put a cloven hoof on the Bucs’ neck early and keep it there. The ESPN cameras capture the CSU sideline in full PTSD mode.
My prediction: NDSU by four scores