‘We have higher expectations.’ Old Dominion shrugs off preseason prediction of last-place finish in Sun Belt’s East Division.
Zack Kuntz and R’Tarriun Johnson exchanged a knowing glance before the question was even finished, as if to wonder what took so long.
What effect, the Old Dominion football players were asked, does being picked to finish dead last in the Sun Belt’s East Division even have?
Kuntz, a junior tight end, spoke first.
“With the transfer portal and how things are different, it honestly makes an analyst’s job harder and harder, because it’s hard to see how if a kid were to transfer from one place to another how their impact’s going to be,” he said.
“If anything, it puts a larger chip on our shoulder, and we’ll take that going into the season.”
In the end, it was a classic answer to a tired but obligatory preseason question. The Monarchs this week were indeed picked to finish seventh in the new seven-team division despite last season’s appearance in the Myrtle Beach Bowl.
Appalachian State, a Sun Belt powerhouse, was picked to win the division, which Monarchs coach Ricky Rahne called “the toughest Group of Five division in college football.”
Even James Madison, which is making the jump from FCS to FBS this season, was picked a spot ahead of ODU.
Not that the Monarchs really care.
“Preseason polls are not worth the paper that they’re printed on,” Rahne said at the league’s football media days in New Orleans. “They’re not worth the digital megabytes that people use to put them out there. They’re there to create excitement for college football in general.
“I know we have higher expectations for ourselves than that, and that’s really all that matters.”
ODU went 6-7 last season, but that record is deceiving. The Monarchs, playing under Rahne for the first time after sitting out the 2020 season as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, got off to a 1-6 start before winning five straight down the stretch to become bowl-eligible for the second time in program history.
Kuntz, fielding questions at a press conference, cited the growing complexity brought on by the transfer portal likely because he epitomizes it. The 6-foot-8, 245-pound Pennsylvanian caught a team-high 73 passes for 692 yards and five touchdowns last season after transferring from Penn State.
Kuntz was second among the nation’s tight ends in receptions.
Who he’ll catch passes from in 2022 remains to be seen; Rahne said Tuesday that he still hasn’t named a winner in a three-man battle at quarterback between incumbent Hayden Wolff, former starter D.J. Mack and Notre Dame transfer Brendon Clark.
App State quarterback Chase Brice, a former backup to Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence who later played at Duke, said the Mountaineers’ position atop the preseason poll is basically meaningless.
“Preseason is great and all, but it doesn’t win you anything,” Brice said.
“I think it’s great honor, but everything will have to be proven on the field.”
The Monarchs couldn’t agree more. Johnson, a senior safety, echoed his teammate when asked about bringing up the preseason rear.
“It’s a bigger chip on our shoulder,” he said. “We’re always the underdog. An underdog is going to always want to be on top.”
It does happen, just as the opposite does. Rahne, a former assistant at Penn State, was quick to point that out.
“Every single year, there’s a top-10 team in the country that ends up going .500 or doesn’t even make a bowl game,” Rahne said. “We’ve got to go out there and we’ve got to prove ourselves each and every game.
“If we’re at a place where we need that type of extrinsic motivation, what are we going to do when they pick us first? We’re about ourselves and where we’re going to go. We’ve got to have that internal motivation.”
David Hall, david.hall@pilotonline.com
