Early Line on Game #1

I seem to recall that as a new program Mercer caught a lot of flack for playing teams like Shorter and Mars Hill. 

Well Shorter and Mars Hill play in week 2. Massey has Shorter as the favorite. So if Shorter doesn't belong on any SoCon schedule, and if Shorter is better than Mars Hill, then........

Since UTC is a 10 point favorite over Samford, that would put UTC as a 38 point favorite over Mars Hill. UTC must have been sleep walking or hung over last year to let Mars Hill get that close.

Just chiming in as WCU has played Mars Hill multiple times over the years. We have done that for a couple of different reasons - 1 being the proximity (Mars Hill is just outside of Asheville) and the other being that we have played multiple FBS teams per season and had to plug a home game in to offset those somehow/some way. I think it hurt us badly last season, as one of our 7 wins came against Mars Hill and I can't imagine didn't factor in when playoff bids came out. For the record, we beat Mars Hill much more handily than UTC did, but I digress (since UTC beat us soundly for the second year in a row). Against FCS competition we were 6-2 (5-2 in SoCon), but we went 1-0 against D-II and 0-2 against Tennessee and Texas A&M so our resume must not have seemed good enough.

Playing non-scholarship schools like Stetson or Davidson doesn't "hurt" your perceived strength of schedule as much as playing a D-II school. I also think playing somebody like Austin Peay is brilliant - not typically a good football team, but for whatever reason they are not considered a "bad" win, either. Had WCU played any of those 3 schools last season instead of Mars Hill, we ***might*** have had a little more consideration for one of the last couple of playoff spots. In that regard, I think Mercer has done a good job of scheduling those teams. Our athletic department must be thinking this same way, as we play Davidson next season rather than a D-II. But with ETSU now officially back in the conference, everybody will have 8 conference games going forward. That typically only leaves 3 spots and most SoCon schools are going to play at least 1 "money" game. So everybody is probably going to try and find a Davidson, Stetson, Mars Hill, or similar.

And as I recall, Mercer caught some flack not for scheduling any of those teams individually but more for the fact that you scheduled several of them each season. For example, you played Reinhardt, Stetson, Ave Maria, Austin Peay, and Warner in 2014. But as a restarted football program, I really don't know how you could have been expected to schedule much differently until this season.

Playing 2 FBS teams in one year doesn't seem smart to me, but Mercer is doing it next year. I'm hoping it is just an aberration. I have no idea, but perhaps Alabama would only agreed to give Mercer a 2021? game by agreeing to a 2017 game as well.

WCU has played 2 FBS teams most years (3 in one season a few years back). FUBeAR is absolutely right - the kids get up for these games, and as long as you don't get anybody hurt and you don't lose 100-0, the games don't typically hurt your standings with the FCS committee as long as you take care of business with your conference and FCS foes. We had a year where we played 2 FBS and 2 D-II schools and that was very problematic - meant we would have had to lose no more than 1 conference game and realistically we probably needed to go undefeated in the SoCon to get in the playoffs. But we have cashed a bunch of checks in the past 4 years and plan on doing so again for the foreseeable future (2 FBS games through at least the next 3 or 4 years).