Palm Beach Post Profiles Shed, NYS Bowl Game Created

I hope everyone had a happy and safe Independence Day weekend and holiday!

While we're still ~6 weeks away from preseason camp, the Statesmen are still making headlines. The latest is a story from the Palm Beach Post reporting on rising SR WR Brandon Shed.

A link to the article can be seen here.

I'll have more on Brandon, and the returning WR corps (among other units), later this summer. I'll once again be writing the Liberty League preseason preview for D3football.com's "Kickoff", so I hope you consider getting a subscription. It's the best source of D3FB information out there.

A link to order Kickoff can be seen here.

In other news, the Empire 8 and Liberty League announced today that they will be forming the first ever "New York State" Postseason Bowl Game. This game will occur in what effectively would be Week 12 of the D3FB season, and the bids would go to each conference's runners-up (who don't qualify for the NCAA tournament). While it's possible for two teams from a conference to be selected, with the expansion of D3FB to approximately 250 teams (and growing) and the addition of Automatic Qualifiers to newer conferences like the MASCAC and NEWMAC, for example, this is a nice and smart way to give more student athletes additional postseason experience.

A link to the announcement can be seen here.

This Bowl series will begin on November 18, 2017 with the LL runner-up as the host. The E8 runner-up would host in 2018 and it would alternate in that same fashion going forward.

Overall I think this is a great (and overdue) idea that matches what other East Region conferences have done (e.g., the New England Bowl, Centennial-MAC Bowl (PA) and others) which creates more opportunities for student athletes (and provides some competition to longer-standing, pay-to-play Bowls like the ECACs). The only "down side" I could potentially see here is that, due to the overlap between the conferences from an OOC scheduling perspective, there is a very high likelihood that these Bowl games will be rematches from earlier regular season ones. Time will tell.

A link to the D3football.com story on this development can be seen here.

Kudos to the E8 and LL for forming this alliance. Hopefully Hobart will have to wait a while to get a bid to one ;)

Thanks for reading and go 'Bart!