During its portion of CAA Media Day a while back, Rhode Island players weren’t shy about their ultimate goal for 2025.
A national championship.
But, after waiting almost four decades for another CAA title and finally bringing it home last year, head coach Jim Fleming knows the Rams are a long, long way from even thinking about a trip to that last game in Nashville the first week of January.
URI is a consensus Top 10 FCS team in the preseason polls and certainly have the talent to make a legitimate run. But, when we asked Coach Fleming on Monday during the CAA’s first regular season weekly coaches call if he’s okay with his guys talking so openly about wanting to get to the title game already, he acknowledged both sides of it.
“I think you always want to better your best and certainly, one of the things everybody sets out for is to be able to win their last football game,” he said. “At this level of football, in order to do that you have to win the national championship. Is that a reasonable expectation? I don’t know. That’s left to be determined week in and week out. So, we have mentioned it one time and then put it in the rearview mirror knowing that the process that gets you to game-to-game victories and wins with consistency is a long battle. It’s a long season.
“Long way off from talking about that level of ball. We just need to make sure we try to come out of the gates and play our best football and getting win No. 1 is the critical thing.”
The 2024 season will go down as one of the best in program history for the Rams, but if you want to know just how locked in the Rams are on their first opponent (Campbell Friday night at home), Fleming’s answer when asked if there will be any pregame ceremonies to acknowledge last year tells you all you need to know.
“Absolutely not,” he said sternly. “Just kick the ball off at I think 6:05 or whatever it is and let’s start the party. We’ve done our chances of looking back. I think for the fans that get to come to Meade (Stadium) for the first time this year, they get to look at that North end zone and get to see that banner that represents that we’ve been able to return to the playoffs and win a championship, so I think that’s fairly special. But, no. No big hoopla going into this. It’s a new year and we’re going to have a very tough out in the first game when Campbell comes back here to play. I’m sure they’re not happy about having to come back two years in a row, but it’s going to be a great football game, a great night, a great environment.
“I hope everybody gets out and has a great time.”