Since 2014, the annual FCS Kickoff game on Saturday has traditionally marked the start of the college football season.
But if a football game is officially ruled “no contest,” did it really happen? And by extension, has the football season really started for UC Davis and Mercer?
“You have to hope that enough people were watching that game on TV to remember that at the end of the year,” UC Davis head coach Tim Plough said during his Monday news conference. “Maybe it’s not in the record book, but it did happen. If you used your eyes, you saw it.”
Davis, ranked eighth in the FCS Stats Perform Top 25, flew to Montgomery, Alabama, to face an 11th-ranked Mercer team that drove a bit more than three hours from its home in Macon, Georgia, to play what was to be the season opener for both teams.
They played three and a half quarters of football, and over that span the Big Sky’s Aggies built a 23-17 lead. But then the lightning strikes started in the vicinity, triggering a required 30-minute delay. And the lightning only continued, restarting the 30-minute clock time and again.
“Mercer only has to drive home, and what I was told is if the game was under five minutes, we would have won, or if we were up by two scores we would have won,” Plough said. “But because it was a six-point game and there were seven minutes left, there had to be a decision on if we were going to play.”
Staying much longer into the night wasn’t an option due to travel logistics, Plough said, and since the storms didn’t abate, the game was declared a no contest. That nullified any of the stats accumulated by either team, including a 13-for-24 start for redshirt freshman quarterback Caden Pinnick. He also had 62 rushing yards.
“We knew we were taking a huge risk with the travel and the humidity, but the…
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Publish date : 2025-08-27 02:04:00
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