Aug. 30 (Thursday)
Tennessee Tech at Chattanooga (ESPN3), 7 p.m.
Shorter at Samford (ESPN+), 7:30 p.m.
Sept. 1 (Saturday)
Furman at Clemson (ACC Network), 12:20 p.m.
*The Citadel at Wofford (ESPN+/CW62), 6 p.m.
Newberry at Western Carolina (ESPN+), 6 p.m.
Mercer at Memphis (ESPN3), 7 p.m.
VMI at Toledo (ESPN3) 7 p.m.
Mars Hill at ETSU (ESPN+), 7:30 p.m.
Schedule notes:
* Southern Conference game
ESPN3 and ESPN+ are available on Roku
NOTES:
• The 2018 season marks the SoCon’s 97th year of football.
• Samford, which tied for second in the SoCon standings, made the FCS playoffs and finished the year ranked 17th nationally in 2017, is the preseason SoCon favorite for the first time. The Bulldogs earned seven of the nine first-place votes in the preseason coaches’ poll, totaling 63 points.
• Full polls and the coaches’ preseason all-conference teams can be found on page 2 of the league notes packet (pdf link on right side of this article). Defending SoCon champion Wofford led all teams with 10 total preseason all-conference selections, putting a league-best six on the first teams and sharing league-high honors with four on the second teams.
• Three league teams are nationally ranked in the preseason, with Samford 10th and Wofford 11th in the AFCA FCS Coaches’ Top 25 and the teams reversed at 11th and 10th, respectively, in the STATS FCS Top 25. Furman is 21st in the coaches’ poll and 23rd in the STATS poll.
• Samford redshirt senior quarterback Devlin Hodges and Western Carolina redshirt junior quarterback Tyrie Adams were among the 25 players listed on the preseason watch list for the 2018 STATS FCS Walter Payton Award for the outstanding offensive player of the year, while Samford redshirt senior defensive lineman Ahmad Gooden, Western Carolina senior defensive back Marvin Tillman and Wofford senior defensive lineman Miles Brown were among the 25 on the preseason watch list for the STATS FCS Buck Buchanan Award, which honors the outstanding defensive player of the year.
• Hodges is the two-time defending SoCon Offensive Player of the Year. He is vying this year to become just the second player in league history to earn the award three times from the SoCon coaches and the first from the league’s media. Furman running back Stanford Jennings earned the media’s Player of the Year award three times from 1981-83 before it was separated by offense and defense, and Appalachian State’s Dexter Coakley was a three-time Defensive Player of the Year by the media.
• Two league coaches will make their head coaching debuts this season. Randy Sanders takes the reins at ETSU following the retirement of former coach Carl Torbush, while Wofford’s Josh Conklin follows SoCon Hall of Fame coach Mike Ayers, who retired following the 2017 season after 30 years at the helm for the Terriers.
• Mercer coach Bobby Lamb enters the season needing one win for 100 in his career. He is fourth in league history with 89 wins as a SoCon coach, as he was 10-2 in 2013, the year before the Bears entered the conference.
• A SoCon team has ranked either first or second nationally in rushing in 17 of the last 18 seasons. The Citadel was second in FCS with 294.6 yards per game on the ground last year.