Big Sky looks strong in their top 3 ... EWU, Weber St, and UCD. MVFC looking strong as well, even with 6-5 UNI losing by 7 to 9-2 UCD on the road . Colonial lost 4 teams in round 1 and losst 5th team in round 2 yesterday (JMU lost to Colgate). So here are entries and records by conference after 2 rounds, just 8 teams left ... all 8 were top seeds:
- Colonial (6 teams) ... 2-5, including 1-1 against itself, so 1-4 against other conferences; just 1 team remaining
- Big Sky (4 teams) .. 4-1, with 3 top 8 seeds still in it
- MVFC (3 teams) .. 3-1, with 6-5 UNI losing by 7 at 9-2 UCD, and 2 top 8 seeds still in it
- Southland (3 teams) .. 1-3 .. out
- Southern (2 teams) .. 1-2 ... out
- OVC (2 teams) .. 2-2 .. out, SEMO beat SB, JSU beat ETSU .. both smoked in round 2
- Patriot (1 team) .. 1-0, seed Colgate still in it
- Big South (1 team) .. 1-0, seed Kennesaw St still in it
- NEC (1 team) .. 1-1 .. out, Duquesne beat Towson, smoked by SDSU in round 2
- PFL (1 team) ... 0-1 .. out
So Colonial has really crapped the bed with their 6 bids. Big Sky has been most impressive ... 3 top 8 seeds win, and Mont St won in 1st round before getting smoked by NDSU in round 2. MVFC has also done well with only loss being 6-5 UNI at 9-2 UCD, and with NDSU/SDSU both blowing out teams yesterday. OVC showed a pulse in round 1, but crashed badly to earth in round 2 yesterday with both getting blown out. Normally bad autobids from Patriot and Big South are legit top 8 seed teams ... KSU and Colgate ... they face our own SDSU and NDSU respectively.
I would predict and all Big Sky-MVFC challenge final four NDSU, SDSU, Weber St, and EWU. Unfortunately, NDSU an SDSU are on collision course in semis, as are EWU and Weber St.
UC Davis looked a lot like the former EIU offense - they wanted to snap the ball every 15 seconds. They had one really good receiver - 6' 4". UNI just had a lot of struggles on the offensive side of the ball.
NDSU and SDSU both favored; NDSU by an amount I would have not really expected in the FCS playoffs (about 4 TD territory). If this is another year where we get two teams in the Final 4 and really getting scheduled out of a better chance at two teams in the Championship game, I think it shows how dominant the MVFC is at the top.
Could this be the year Klieman departs? His long FCS runs certainly don't help looking for a different job; however, that didn't stop Bohl from departing. Klieman, though signed through 2023, has a Dan Muller-like buyout, where it doesn't really cost much in relative terms to leave. His longevity bonus of $50,000 to stay til January 5, 2019, could either be paid off by a new employer or he could just leave after that.