College football 2020 FCS, Ivy League and HBCU preview: A Blitz Podcast

The Saturday Blitz podcast begins its 2020 college football previews by taking a look at the FCS ranks, including the HBCU and Ivy League races.

COVID-19 continues to threaten the 2020 college football season, but until the hammer drops, we are going to proceed as if the season will proceed as normal, though we both know that it will almost certainly look drastically different.

With the college football season just two months away, it’s time for the podcast crew to start previewing the 2020 season. As always, we try to be a bit more diverse than other college football podcasts/blogs by beginning our previews at the FCS ranks.

We break up our FCS preview into three segments.

In the first segment, we preview the Ivy League race, and discuss just why the casual fan of the sport should care about the Ivy league, particularly when the champion is not allowed to compete in the FCS playoff.

The consensus for 2020 puts Yale, Princeton, and Dartmouth at the top of the race for the league championship, but what other teams might surprise and make a move toward the top three this season?

In the second segment, we look at the FCS race as a whole, with the big question once again pertaining to who can actually challenge North Dakota State for the FCS championship? The Bison have won eight of the last nine FCS titles, and with quarterback Trey Lance entering his redshirt sophomore season as a projected first round pick in the 2021 NFL Draft, it’s hard to envision a team overtaking North Dakota State this season.

That doesn’t mean the race won’t be intriguing, however, as there are numerous quality teams at the FCS level who will be trying to end North Dakota State’s autonomous rein atop the division.

In our final segment this week, we take a look at the drastically changing landscape of HBCU football. HBCU’s have been the most impacted by COVID-19 so far with several out-of-conference games being cancelled for the 2020 season already.

Along with those cancellations, the Celebration Bowl — aka the Black College National Championship Game — is likely to look much different after this season with North Carolin A&T leaving the MEAC for the Big South in 2021. Florida A&M and Bethune-Cookman are joining the mass MEAC exodus as they depart for the SWAC following the end of this season.

Check out this week’s episode for our in-depth dive into the FCS ranks where we answer all the existential questions while also giving you our projected Ivy winner, FCS semifinalists and national champion, and Celebration Bowl participants.

The Saturday Blitz Podcast is part of the FanSided Radio Network at Spreaker. The show goes live every Wednesday morning. You can reach John Mitchell at @jlmitchell93 and Zach Bigalke at @zbigalke on Twitter.