Villanova (0-1) hosts Colgate (1-0). Too early for a market line, but the model likes Villanova (0-1) (70%).
What’s at stake
Villanova
- Villanova won the 2009 FCS national championship over an undefeated Montana team, made the 2025 FCS semifinals at 12-3, and is moving to the Patriot League in 2026 -- a program that builds with discipline in the permanent shadow of its own basketball team's national titles.
Colgate
- The upstate mountain program living in the shadow of a legendary past, desperate to reclaim it.
The series
Villanova leads the series 5-1
6 meetings since 1978 · Villanova has won the last 5
- 2025Villanova 24–17
- 2024Villanova 28–3
- 2023Villanova 42–19
- 2019Villanova 34–14
- 2008Villanova 55–28
Face-off
What each fanbase carries into this one.
Colgate
The chip · vs the blue bloodsThe chip is the Kerr name itself — when Andy Kerr coached Colgate 1929-1946, he built a dynasty that seems impossible now. The program and the fanbase are haunted by the question: how did we have the legend and lose the tradition?
What this game touches
The 2024 collapse and the pattern of coaching instability. Colgate won only 2 games in 2024 (1-5 Patriot League) under coach Stan Dakosty and parted ways after the season. The wound is not one bad year but a series of coaching changes and the inability to translate the Kerr legacy into sustained success. The program has cycled through coaches, each leaving Colgate in rebuilding mode.
Villanova
The chip · vs the national mediaThe chip is geographic and cultural: Villanova is a Philadelphia Catholic school leaving the CAA (and a regional conference with rivals like Delaware, UCONN, Maine) for the Patriot League (a Northeast conference with no Philadelphia presence). The fanbase believes Villanova football deserves more respect, more investment, more national attention.
What this game touches
Basketball's permanent overshadowing. Villanova is a school with two national championships—one in football (2009 FCS), one in basketball (2018 and others). Yet on campus, basketball dominates completely. Football exists in clear shadow. This is not a scar but structural: it has freed football to build on its own terms rather than compete for a campus narrative it will never win.
Conditions
Villanova is 78% at home, 59% on the road since 2018 (35-10 home, 27-19 away).
Recent games
Villanova
- Wk 1Lvs William & Mary32-35
Colgate
- Wk 1Wat Fordham24-14
Conference standings
- Villanova#70-1
- Colgate#31-0