The Blue Hens open the 2024 football season on Thursday night against Bryant at Delaware Stadium.
The Blue Hens open the 2024 football season on Thursday night against Bryant at Delaware Stadium.
The 2024 football season marks the end of an era for the University of Delaware.
But the Blue Hens can’t see it that way. This has to be the start of something good, not the capstone of a program’s precious football legacy.
Delaware and Bryant will face off at 7 p.m. Thursday at Delaware Stadium. The home team is playing its final season as a member of the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision, the newest designation for a league in which Delaware has enjoyed prominent status since the 1940s.
The move to Conference USA in the Football Bowl Subdivision next year makes this a transitional season. Delaware is not eligible for the NCAA playoffs, which have been its primary goal for the past 50 years and where the last two seasons ended.
But that doesn’t mean this season is meaningless for the Blue Hens. In fact, it could be one of the most important they’ve ever had, even if the traditional advantages are missing.
The future has actually already begun.
“When you play football,” said Delaware defensive lineman Jack Hall, “it always comes down to that.”
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That’s a mindset worth adopting, as Delaware desperately needs to build a solid foundation for its climb to the FBS, and the fan base should demand it, too.
That seems to be the approach that third-year coach Ryan Carty and his staff and players have taken – and to their credit. Running backs coach Andrew Pierce, who was instrumental in Delaware’s run to the 2010 FCS title game, summed it up perfectly:
“We want to end this thing with a bang,” he said.
Unbeaten season goal for Blue Hens
That is and should be the mindset of eliminating each weekly opponent with an eye on a perfect season. Such accomplishments are rare and quite difficult, even for a 2024 Delaware team that will benefit from the early roster improvements and scholarship increases for CUSA.
“We can’t play in the national championship or anything like that,” said preseason All-American running back Marcus Yarns. “But for us, now that we can’t, 11-0 is a championship win.”
That will be tough. In the previous 132 seasons, Delaware has only gone undefeated and tied in the regular season five times – 1942 (8-0), 1946 (10-0), 1963 (8-0), 1972 (10-0) and in the spring of 2021 (5-0). Three of those teams – 1946, 1963 and 1972 – were declared national champions by news agency polls.
“We feel like we’ve done our job if we win every game,” Yarns said. “Winning every game is what we need to do to get to the next round.”
Delaware certainly has opponents that would love to give the Hens a painful kick in the tail feathers on the way to their new destination. October road rival Richmond and season-ending nemesis Villanova seem particularly capable of doing so.
Better off than future competitors
The Hens have a better launching pad than their future CUSA rivals Kennesaw State and Sam Houston.
In its final year as an FCS program in 2023, Kennesaw State played just nine games, winning three of them against a hodgepodge of opponents from different classes without the benefit of a conference schedule.
Likewise, Sam Houston played nine times in 2022 before joining CUSA in 2023, finishing 5-4 while still benefiting from some secured league games.
Delaware will still play the full 8-game Coastal Athletic Association schedule in 2024, although it is excluded from the league title game and the FCS postseason. Those games will count in the standings.
“We’re lucky,” Carty said of the situation. “… We’re excited about this season. It’s definitely not something anyone would overlook. We’re excited to be able to finish what we started in the CAA and make sure we leave our mark.”
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Roster management important
Looking ahead to 2025, Delaware must do what will best serve the country in 2024.
Certainly it would be wise to not allow some players, especially the youngest and newest in the program, to play. The fact that a player can play in up to four games and still retain his year of eligibility is especially valuable to Delaware’s roster management this year.
The mobility college football players now enjoy thanks to the transfer portal could further inspire teams to let them play if they have any, since rosters can change so drastically from year to year.
“Everything has to be constantly discussed and adjusted throughout the season,” said Carty.
This will be a balancing act that Delaware must master.
“We can do our best to make sure we win every game this year,” Carty said, “at least have a chance to do so and then hopefully prepare for next season… Playing student-athletes this season also helps them prepare for next season. That’s a constant thought in a coach’s world.”
“A beautiful farewell”
What the Hens do on their 10 Saturdays and one Thursday will significantly shape their development toward an FBS/CUSA program.
Hall said he came to Delaware to pursue a national title, agreeing with Yarns. Not being available this year requires a different but equally determined attitude, and Hall believes the Hens will indeed bring it.
“We really talked about just taking it game by game,” Hall said. “One of our goals is to beat everybody.”
That means giving the soon-to-be former CAA opponents something to remember the Hens by.
“You don’t make a lot of friends in this conference,” Hall added. “It’s a very competitive conference with very good teams and we had a lot of hard-fought games… So we really want to spread that throughout the conference and give it a nice send-off.”
Contact Kevin Tresolini at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com. And our DE Game Day newsletter.
