By ISU Sports Information
SPARTANBURG, S.C. – The Illinois State football team joins three other Missouri Valley Football Conference teams ranked in the Top 10 of the FCS Coaches Poll, as the Redbirds were picked No. 8 in the first poll of the 2016 season. ISU was previously ranked No. 10 in the initial STATS FCS Top 25, announced Monday.
Five-time defending national champion North Dakota State opens the 2016 season as the unanimous preseason No.1 in the FCS Coaches Poll. This is the second consecutive season that NDSU has been unanimously voted the top program among FCS teams. Sam Houston State sits in the No. 2 spot in the poll after posting an 11-4 mark last season. Jacksonville State, Richmond and Northern Iowa close out the top five.
Charleston Southern checks in at No. 6, followed by Chattanooga, the Redbirds, McNeese State and William & Mary. Eastern Washington, Northern Arizona, North Dakota and Villanova all claimed spots in the poll after finishing 2015 unranked.
Following a heartbreaking loss to the Bison in the 2014 FCS National Championship game in Frisco, Texas, the Redbirds rebounded with 10 wins in 2015 and advanced to the FCS quarterfinals for the third time in the past four seasons. ISU, which finished No. 5 in the final STATS FCS Top 25 poll last year, is led by head coach Brock Spack, who begins his eighth season at the helm of the program (56-29). The Redbirds are working toward making the playoffs in three-straight seasons for the first time in program history.
The 2016 squad returns 15 starters (nine offense, six defense) from last year’s team and features five players who were selected to the MVFC preseason team. Included in the group are 2015 All-MVFC First-Team selections Anthony Warrum and Mark Spelman, and they were joined by Kyle Avaloy, Brady Tibbits and Alec Kocour. Spelman, Avaloy and Warrum were also selected as preseason All-Americans by STATS.
This year’s preseason poll features teams from eight different conferences, with the Big Sky claiming six teams in the Top 25. The MVFC had five teams represented and the Colonial Athletic Association, another perennial power, had four.
The FCS Coaches Poll is based exclusively on a voting panel of head coaches in the FCS under the cooperation of the Collegiate Commissioners Association (CCA) and the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) and is administered by the Southern Conference.
