The Idaho State football team begins fall camp on Aug. 1.
And to get you ready, we're counting down with a question every day until the start of it.
Today's question: How important is the upcoming season to Cody Hawkins’ tenure at Idaho State?
And the answer is − extremely important.
In talking with Hawkins, you can sense the urgency to have a successful season this year. There are plenty of reasons why:
The Bengals have 33 seniors on this year’s roster, most of whom are scholarship players. They brought in a large group of junior college transfers last season in order to get an immediate infusion of experience on a roster that had been decimated after the disastrous one-year Charlie Ragle experience. The downside of that immediate infusion of experience − the loss of a lot of important athletes after two seasons. There are going to be a lot of holes in the starting lineup to fill next year.
This is one of those quirky years when the NCAA allows FCS schools to play 12 games, which also allowed ISU to schedule six home games for the first time since 2014. Hawkins made the decision to bus his team to Oregon State for the season opener so he could buy that sixth home game, against Division II Western Oregon.
It’s also the first season, not counting the COVID-19-shortened spring season of 2020, since 2018 that Idaho State hasn’t had to play two FBS opponents in the same season. Instead, the Bengals are playing two nonconference FCS opponents – North Dakota and Southern Utah. Those won’t be gimmies by any stretch, but at least they are games against opponents with the same number of scholarships.
The Bengals get perhaps their three toughest conference opponents – Montana State, Sacramento State and Idaho – at home. By contrast, they play winnable games on the road at Cal Poly and Eastern Washington.
Can all of that calculus add up to, say, a 6-6 record and continued momentum for the program heading into Hawkins’ third season?
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