HERO Sports was on site for SoCon Media Day last month.
Promised anonymity, we asked some head coaches who their preseason favorite is to win the SoCon title, the FCS national championship, and which current SoCon player they would draft onto their team.
Here are their answers.
Without picking your team, who is your favorite to win the SoCon title?
Chattanooga has the quarterback back. And the defensive lineman is really good. I’d go with them.
It’s such a great league. And in today’s game, you don’t always know who has what. But I would say Chattanooga or Furman.
Chattanooga. Really good returning quarterback, always good defensively, always talented, and they do a good job coaching.
Western Carolina. They have more coming back from the end of last year, including the quarterback.
Chattanooga. I think they’re a very talented team. They have a lot of good guys back, and they have a chance to have a really good year.
Chattanooga. That’s how I voted in our preseason poll.
Chattanooga. They have a really good defensive front. And anytime you have a good defensive front, you have a chance to win a lot of games. And they’re very athletic at the other positions.
Chattanooga. They have a lot of guys coming back. Rusty [Wright] does a really good job. They have a good schedule. And they’ve been trending upward for a while.
Without picking your team, who is your favorite to win the FCS national championship?
South Dakota State. That’s a different animal out there right now. There is a lot of catching up everyone has to do to get to that. Those couple out there, but them for sure.
South Dakota State has been so dominant, so you have to go with them until someone knocks them off.
I’m going to go with Montana.
South Dakota State. They’re playing really well, and I don’t see why they can’t do it again this year.
North Dakota State.
Hard not to say South Dakota State. I’ve watched them a fair amount. They don’t have any weaknesses.
Until someone knocks them off, I think South Dakota State is the team to beat. But I do think Idaho may shock some people.
Well, I gotta say South Dakota State.
If you could draft one current SoCon player onto your team, who would you choose?
That Chattanooga tight end [Jay Gibson]. We looked at him back when he was in the portal.
Probably the d-lineman from Chattanooga [Marlon Taylor]. D-linemen are hard to find.
The d-tackle at Chattanooga [Marlon Taylor] is a good player. I think he’s a top-level guy.
That corner at Western [CJ Williams]. I like him.
With the situation I’m in right now, I would probably take [Western Carolina quarterback] Cole Gonzales. He’s a good player.
Marlon [Taylor] at Chattanooga. Good defensive linemen are hard to come by and he’s been a really good player in our league for a long time.
The [Marlon] Taylor kid, the nose tackle at Chattanooga. The line of scrimmage is so hard to recruit and develop.
