Is FSU Football game vs. Samford best between FBS, FCS teams in 2018?

FSU football will again host an opponent from the lower Division 1 classification, but this might be the best game between FBS and FCS teams this year.

Just five days after the FSU football team opens the season with ACC foe Virginia Tech, the Seminoles will return to the field at Doak Campbell Stadium that went to a college football playoff last season – no, not the Clemson Tigers who they will play at the end of October or the Alabama team they opened the season with last year.

Nope, the Noles will host the always powerful Samford Bulldogs. That’s right, the same Samford team who FSU football has played twice before, with the last game coming to open the 2010 season in what was supposed to be the final opener of legendary coach Bobby Bowden’s career before he was forced out for someone else.

In 2018, FSU football will likely enter the game against Samford ranked if they can get past the Hokies while the Bulldogs are coming off an 8-4 record in 2017 that included an appearance in the FCS Playoffs.

In fact, Samford is one of just 10 teams ranked in the Top 25 of the first FCS poll this year to play a team from one of the FBS’s Power Five conferences – and one of just four teams who is playing  a preseason ranked FBS opponent.

"No. 2 James Madison vs. N.C. StateNo. 3 South Dakota State vs. Iowa StateNo. 7 Eastern Washington vs. Washington StateNo. 9 New Hampshire vs. ColoradoNo. 10 Samford vs. No. 19 FLORIDA STATENo. 12 Northern Iowa vs. IowaNo. 17 Nicholls State vs. KansasNo. 21 Furman vs. No. 2 ClemsonNo. 23 Austin Peay vs. No. 3 GeorgiaNo. 24 Youngstown State vs. No. 20 West Virginia"

While both Clemson and Georgia are ranked higher than FSU football entering the season, the Seminoles are the only one of the four ranked teams who is playing a FCS team ranked in the top 10 entering the season.

Am I saying that the Bulldogs have the best chance of those four teams to knock off a FBS team this season? Not at all. I think South Dakota State and New Hampshire have a better chance of winning their games than FSU football does of losing a game against a FCS foe for the first time in program history (something Florida and Miami can’t say, by the way.)

Over the past 10 seasons, the Seminoles have won all 12 games against FCS foes they faced – and there is no reason to think that No. 13 will be unlucky for the Noles even as the play one of the better teams from that level in program history.