Three E8 Teams in D3football.com Preseason Rankings
Three Empire 8 Conference member schools were listed in the 2016 preseason D3football.com National Poll. Defending conference champion Cortland State is currently ranked No. 17, while St. John Fisher (29 votes) and Alfred (two votes) are both in the receiving votes category.
Last season Cortland earned the Empire 8 title in its first year in the league with a 6-2 conference mark, and the program finished 9-3 overall. Cortland clinched the league title with its sixth straight win over Ithaca College in the annual Cortaca Jug game. The Red Dragons won their NCAA playoff opener versus 21st-ranked Salisbury before falling in the second round at second-ranked Linfield.
Fisher, who shared the E8 regular season title last season with Cortland, will open the 2016 season in just over one month, as the Cardinals host Olivet College at 1 p.m. on Saturday, September 3
rd at Growney Stadium. The Cardinals qualified for an ECAC Bowl Game last season, marking their 13
th consecutive postseason trip.
Allfred, under the director of third-year head coach
Bob Rankl, is coming off a 2015 season in which the Saxons went 8-3 (5-3 Empire 8 Conference), capping the year off with a 12-11 win over Fitchburg State in the ECAC Whitelaw Bowl Championship game.
The D3football.com Top 25 is voted on by a panel of 25 coaches, sports information directors and media members from across the country, and is published weekly.