Coastal Carolina cracks top 25 in national college football polls for first time ever
Coastal Carolina’s surprising start to the 2020 season has resulted in the first Football Bowl Subdivision national rankings in program history.
The Chanticleers are ranked 24th in the Amway Coaches Poll released Sunday and are No. 25 in The Associated Press Top 25 poll.
Coastal is 4-0 and is coming off a 30-27 win Wednesday night over Louisiana (3-1), which was ranked 21st in both the AP and Coaches polls.
The Chants also have a road win over Kansas and home wins over Arkansas State and Football Championship Subdivision foe Campbell. They were underdogs in all three of their FBS games.
“It is something that’s pretty special for our university and our program being the first time ever,” CCU head coach Jamey Chadwell said Monday. “It’s a big deal, but also we’re realistic knowing if we slip up one time we’ll probably never see it again. So I told our guys if you want to stay there and continue to do something for this program, we have to continue to keep winning. We’ve got good leaders and I think we’ll do a good job of keeping it in perspective.”
CCU has received attention from the voters for a couple weeks. Last week, CCU received 37 votes in the AP poll and 48 points in the Amway Coaches Poll, which both put the Chants at 32nd in the country.
Coastal had the 35th-most votes in both polls two weeks ago, garnering 25 points in the AP poll as well as what was then the most points in their history in the USA Today Amway Coaches poll with 38. The Chants have received votes in the coaches’ poll in five consecutive weeks.
Chadwell is one of 48 voters in the coaches’ poll and revealed Monday that he has been voting for the Chants. “I’ve been voting for the Sun Belt teams that I feel like deserve to be ranked, including Louisiana and the people we’ve been playing,” Chadwell said. “I don’t obviously get to watch tons of football, but I feel do I know good teams when I do see them, so I try to be fair and reasonable to where I think we are or Louisiana was or anybody in our league that I think is playing at a high level.”
Both polls include all FBS teams whether they have played yet or not.
Following Coastal’s win over Louisiana, the Chants received a plea by ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt to voters in the polls to rank them on his SportsCenter show Wednesday night, and that helped spawn support on social media with the hashtags #RankEm and #RankTheChants.
National rankings are not new to the CCU program. Prior to beginning their transition to the FBS level and joining the Sun Belt Conference in 2017, the Chants were regularly ranked in the FCS top 25 over a few years and spent a combined 10 weeks at No. 1 in 2014 and 2015.
This story was originally published October 18, 2020 at 12:39 PM.
