FCS Playoffs

[fourthandshort]

Having watched the process for years...the magic number is 8 wins. As long as you're in a full scholarship league (not Pioneer, Northeast nor Patriot for example) and commit to sending your champion to the playoffs (not SWAC or MEAC), all of the 8 qualifying win teams generally are in the playoffs. 7-4 puts you on the fence, and only occasionally do the 6-5 teams get invited.

The Colonial has enough lower end teams, and enough teams overall, than they frequently have a group of 8 win teams.

Yes, generally true.

But in the end, playoff records by conference are a strong performance indicator both of the teams coming out of certain conferences and of the selection committee's performance in picking at large teams. Some tend to think that MVFC gets enough teams .. our playoff record historically empirically proves we don't get enough. Our collective record excluding NDSU is well above .500 .. no other conference is close over the last 10-12 years. Only Big Sky is close over the last 4 years .. this year, they were deservedly the better conference. Colonial getting 5 bids was not justified .. they softened their OOC schedules and softened their conference with new weak teams and now have 13 conf teams. only playing 8 of 13 .. that's how they get to 8 wins.

Here we sit in quarterfinals with 3 of 5 Big Sky teams, 2 of 3 MVFC teams, and 1 of 5 Colonial teams .. W&M, who's cost of entry was a game against weak autobid Gardner Webb.

Big Sky's 2 losses were Weber St against #4 seed Mont St by 8 and Montana losing at 3 seed NDSU by 23.

MVFC's 1 loss was UND against 9-2 Weber St, who should have been a top 8 seed.

Colonial played a bunch of weak auto-bids from east coast and is still down to 1 team now. Only legit tough team they played was Elon losing at Home by 25 to Furman.

 

[Virginia Redbird]

Yes, generally true.

But in the end, playoff records by conference are a strong performance indicator both of the teams coming out of certain conferences and of the selection committee's performance in picking at large teams. Some tend to think that MVFC gets enough teams .. our playoff record historically empirically proves we don't get enough. Our collective record excluding NDSU is well above .500 .. no other conference is close over the last 10-12 years. Only Big Sky is close over the last 4 years .. this year, they were deservedly the better conference. Colonial getting 5 bids was not justified .. they softened their OOC schedules and softened their conference with new weak teams and now have 13 conf teams. only playing 8 of 13 .. that's how they get to 8 wins.

Here we sit in quarterfinals with 3 of 5 Big Sky teams, 2 of 3 MVFC teams, and 1 of 5 Colonial teams .. W&M, who's cost of entry was a game against weak autobid Gardner Webb.

Big Sky's 2 losses were Weber St against #4 seed Mont St by 8 and Montana losing at 3 seed NDSU by 23.

MVFC's 1 loss was UND against 9-2 Weber St, who should have been a top 8 seed.

Colonial played a bunch of weak auto-bids from east coast and is still down to 1 team now. Only legit tough team they played was Elon losing at Home by 25 to Furman.

Most likely some politics in play. That is nothing new. When I lived in Michigan in the 90's the complaints about the power and influence U of Michigan had in the BIG 10 was a constant mantra. There usually is some controversy in the selection for the FBS championship final four. Who has the tougher schedule Ohio State or Alabama? OSU has only one loss but Alabama plays in the SEC an arguably stronger conference (at least according to SEC fans). It is pretty obvious that the Colonial Conference were likely given too may spots. They did not perform very well and I expect W&M will get beat this weekend. If W&M lose then all Colonial teams are gone. I had no proof at all just my own personal conspiracy theory but I believe when they make the selection they try to balance it off so one conference does not dominate the at large bids year after years regardless of merit. It is just politics.

 

[fourthandshort]

Most likely some politics in play. That is nothing new. When I lived in Michigan in the 90's the complaints about the power and influence U of Michigan had in the BIG 10 was a constant mantra. There usually is some controversy in the selection for the FBS championship final four. Who has the tougher schedule Ohio State or Alabama? OSU has only one loss but Alabama plays in the SEC an arguably stronger conference (at least according to SEC fans). It is pretty obvious that the Colonial Conference were likely given too may spots. They did not perform very well and I expect W&M will get beat this weekend. If W&M lose then all Colonial teams are gone. I had no proof at all just my own personal conspiracy theory but I believe when they make the selection they try to balance it off so one conference does not dominate the at large bids year after years regardless of merit. It is just politics.

For FCS selection committee, it is combination of regional and conference bias/favoritism, and sheer laziness when it comes to considering strength of schedule.

This thing with Colonial has gone on for over a decade, though simmered in recent years since to their 2018 playoff sh-t show, until this year. But as ISUBU said, the selection committee was able to hide behind the Colonial teams with 8 wins .. achieved only by softening of their OOC games and watering down their own conference with new weak teams.

The bias was initially just spill over from the Colonial legit dominance in the 2000's, but it continued well into the 2010's when MVFC clearly started dominating with addition of NDSU and SDSU ... all ships clearly rose.

But it took until MVFC went 22-1 in OOC games in 2014-15 for us to get more than 2 bids .. and we got 5 and still dominated the playoffs going 7-1 in non-MVFC head to head games. Meaning 3 MVFC teams got knocked out by other 3 other MVFC teams, while we knocked out 7 non-MVFC teams. I argued then that we should have gotten 6 that year .. YSU was 7-5.

But getting 6 teams was unprecedented until 2018 when Colonial got 6 teams and we got just 3 teams. MVFC went 6-1 in non-MVFC games this playoff. Only loss being UNI (6-5) on road at #6 UC Davis (9-2) .. lost by just 7 ... repeating MVFC 6-5 lost by 7 to Big Sky 9-2 on road. This was very common many years .. like in 2016 with our own 6-5 ISU nearly beating 9-2 UCA on road in 2016 playoff. Many here and elsewhere said we had no business being in playoffs.

So how did 6 bid Colonial do in 2018 playoffs ... they went 1-4 in playin round. Their only playin round win was JMU over Delaware. JMU went on to play #8 seed Colgate and lost by 3 ... JMU was solid that year. Colgate next got smoked by NDSU 35-0. Maine was only legit good Colonial team that year getting #7 seed and winning 2 games before getting smoked by 31 against EWU. NDSU beat EWU in Natty by 14. Note, Elon got an at large bid with a 6-4 record .. a game was canceled due to Hurricane. So Colonial got three teams in at 7-4 and 1 team at 6-4, plus legit teams in Maine and JMU ... seriously ?? Overall, Colonial went 3-6 that year, and just 2-5 in non-Colonial matchups .. compare that to our 6-1 in non-MVFC matchups.

Despite this, Colonial finished 2018 season with 6 teams in STATS top 25, MVFC with just 3 teams. They were so over-rated in 2018 and playoffs proved it. Similar this season, though they beat the weak auto bids this year, then lost in round of 16 with only W&M advancing of the 5 bids.

There were two other season like 2018 and 2022 in last decade or so .. 2011 and one other. But from 2011 and on, the Colonial playoff performance excluding JMU is dismal, well below .500. The MVFC playoff record excluding our best team NDSU is around a .650 win %. Same could be said for for Big Sky and EWU .. well below .500 excl EWU .. that is, up until the last 3 or 4 seasons. No other conference is even in the discussion.

This is why i dwell on our conference SOS so much. YSU should have gotten a bid at 7-4. Even UNI 6-5 was deserving, though I get it was a stretch .. I'm quite sure they would beat several other at large bids. Similar for 5-6 SIU and a healthy ISUr football team.

But 2022 kudos goes to Big Sky .. they are top conference this season, with us not to far behind .. they are deeper at top of conf for sure.

 

[Aggie]

NDSU taking care of business. Appreciate Stamford trying hard but welcome to MVFC.

 

[Virginia Redbird]

For FCS selection committee, it is combination of regional and conference bias/favoritism, and sheer laziness when it comes to considering strength of schedule.

This thing with Colonial has gone on for over a decade, though simmered in recent years since to their 2018 playoff sh-t show, until this year. But as ISUBU said, the selection committee was able to hide behind the Colonial teams with 8 wins .. achieved only by softening of their OOC games and watering down their own conference with new weak teams.

The bias was initially just spill over from the Colonial legit dominance in the 2000's, but it continued well into the 2010's when MVFC clearly started dominating with addition of NDSU and SDSU ... all ships clearly rose.

But it took until MVFC went 22-1 in OOC games in 2014-15 for us to get more than 2 bids .. and we got 5 and still dominated the playoffs going 7-1 in non-MVFC head to head games. Meaning 3 MVFC teams got knocked out by other 3 other MVFC teams, while we knocked out 7 non-MVFC teams. I argued then that we should have gotten 6 that year .. YSU was 7-5.

But getting 6 teams was unprecedented until 2018 when Colonial got 6 teams and we got just 3 teams. MVFC went 6-1 in non-MVFC games this playoff. Only loss being UNI (6-5) on road at #6 UC Davis (9-2) .. lost by just 7 ... repeating MVFC 6-5 lost by 7 to Big Sky 9-2 on road. This was very common many years .. like in 2016 with our own 6-5 ISU nearly beating 9-2 UCA on road in 2016 playoff. Many here and elsewhere said we had no business being in playoffs.

So how did 6 bid Colonial do in 2018 playoffs ... they went 1-4 in playin round. Their only playin round win was JMU over Delaware. JMU went on to play #8 seed Colgate and lost by 3 ... JMU was solid that year. Colgate next got smoked by NDSU 35-0. Maine was only legit good Colonial team that year getting #7 seed and winning 2 games before getting smoked by 31 against EWU. NDSU beat EWU in Natty by 14. Note, Elon got an at large bid with a 6-4 record .. a game was canceled due to Hurricane. So Colonial got three teams in at 7-4 and 1 team at 6-4, plus legit teams in Maine and JMU ... seriously ?? Overall, Colonial went 3-6 that year, and just 2-5 in non-Colonial matchups .. compare that to our 6-1 in non-MVFC matchups.

Despite this, Colonial finished 2018 season with 6 teams in STATS top 25, MVFC with just 3 teams. They were so over-rated in 2018 and playoffs proved it. Similar this season, though they beat the weak auto bids this year, then lost in round of 16 with only W&M advancing of the 5 bids.

There were two other season like 2018 and 2022 in last decade or so .. 2011 and one other. But from 2011 and on, the Colonial playoff performance excluding JMU is dismal, well below .500. The MVFC playoff record excluding our best team NDSU is around a .650 win %. Same could be said for for Big Sky and EWU .. well below .500 excl EWU .. that is, up until the last 3 or 4 seasons. No other conference is even in the discussion.

This is why i dwell on our conference SOS so much. YSU should have gotten a bid at 7-4. Even UNI 6-5 was deserving, though I get it was a stretch .. I'm quite sure they would beat several other at large bids. Similar for 5-6 SIU and a healthy ISUr football team.

But 2022 kudos goes to Big Sky .. they are top conference this season, with us not to far behind .. they are deeper at top of conf for sure.

I still believe it is simply politics and/or bias. They are pretty much the same thing in many ways. The strength of the schedule is clearly no factor whatsoever. They are going to divide out the bids for other reasons. W&M got absolutely destroyed yesterday. They were not as good a team as others that did not get a bid in my opinion. It is what it is and it is never going to change. As for the MVFC teams that finish 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc., and don't get bids, finish 1st or 2nd and you will get into the playoffs. You rely on a selection committee at your own risk. If they selected the best teams would we really be seeing a 55-7 blowout in the third round of the playoffs? Shouldn't the last 8 teams playing be really good? Congrats to UIW btw, I did not think they would pull off the win. NDSU took care of business in the dome as usual. I expect a win from SDSU. We are still on track for an all-MVFC championship game.
This could be kind of interesting. We could see NDSU and SDSU in the FCS Championship game for the rematch and also Michigan and Ohio State in the FBS Championship game for another rematch! Still, some football to play but how strange is that?

 

[Birdswin]

The two late games on Friday - CAA William & Mary just got stomped by Montana State 55-7.

Incarnate Word and Sac State - a Wild One 66-63 - just nuts - Word wins. There were 57 points scored in the 4th quarter.

 

[ISUBU]

The two late games on Friday - CAA William & Mary just got stomped by Montana State 55-7.

Incarnate Word and Sac State - a Wild One 66-63 - just nuts - Word wins. There were 57 points scored in the 4th quarter.

It will be interesting to see the hurry up offense of Incarnate Word versus the time consuming offense of NDSU.

 

[Total Red]

It will be interesting to see the hurry up offense of Incarnate Word versus the time consuming offense of NDSU.

As far as I'm concerned the playoffs just started. We've gotten rid of all the pretenders. I'm not a fan of the bloated 24 team format.

Incarnate Word has the multi-dimensional scoring punch we only dream about. They haven't been held under 30 points all season and in their last 4 games they have scored 73, 66, 41 and 66. This time of year the passing game can get stalled by bad weather, but the IW playoff path has been kind in that regard. Their first game was at home in Texas and then off to Sacramento, CA. Next they play indoors in the FargoDome. I like NDSU in that one but IW can score in bunches so they're never really out of it.

I'm assuming SDSU will get past Holy Cross today but it could be close. A Jackrabbit win would set up a semi-final rematch from '21 with Montana State. Montana St. won that one 31-17 but SDSU has Gronowski back at QB. Montana St. dominated W&M so this should be another good one.

 

[cubird]

Bison lost at least 2 guys last night to injuries being carted off on gators.

 

[MadBird]

For my friends on the board, Montana State #2 wide receiver is Ravi Alston, a California native who is a grad transfer from DIII St. John's in Minnesota. A very nice 6'3 200 lb athlete who excelled in DIII and hasn't done all that bad in FCS either.

 

[fourthandshort]

So in conclusion on Colonial getting 5 bids this year:- .. they had a total record of 4-5 ... not bad right ? Until you dig deeper ...

Round 1 (playin): 3-1:

.. 3 wins were all against weak auto-bids ranked well outside top 25: St Francis (Massey #50), Davidson (#102), and Fordham (#42)
.. Only Elon played a real playoff team Furman, and lost by 25 at Home

Round 2 (top 16): 1-3

.. 1 win was W&M over Gardner-Webb (#45), granted by 40. Gardner Webb had beat 7-4 EKU.
.. Richmond did have solid loss against Sac St by 7, after smoking #102 Davidson by 41 - so we can count Richmond as legit playoff level team.
.. Delaware lost by 36 to SDSU
.. UNH lost to #8 HC by 16 .. we'll see how HC does against SDSU today

Round 3 (top 8): 0-1

.. W&M got smoked by a real playoff team Mont St by 49.
.. noting Weber St only lost by 8 to Mont St and UND only lost to Weber St by 7
.. the BEST Colonial team lost by 49 !!!!!

So ZERO quality wins, and just 1 quality loss (Richmond v Sac St). Then add 3 embarrassing losses as soon as they played a real playoff team ... W&M by 48, Delaware by 36, and Elon by 25 at Home .. all got smoked. Only 1 of 5 teams, Richmond, can hold their heads high exiting the playoffs. But Colonial beat noone good in playoffs in 2022, even while going 4-5 this year .. thanks to very weak autobid year on the east coast.

That's not to say they only deserved 1 Team - I would say 3 Teams maybe .. W&M, Richmond, then flip a coin on the other 3 ... but all 3 was just plain stupid. But it is also to say, MVFC deserved more than 3 Teams .. YSU and UNI would have been much better picks than Delaware and UNH.

The funny thing is .. Massey Computer had Colonial pegged just about right. Given how Samford and Furman performed better than recent years, it's looking like 7-4 Mercer should also have gotten bid from Southern Conf over couple Colonial teams as well.

Massey Ratings - Colonial Athletic Association .. Colonial Massey rankings. Not endorsing computer rankings, just use them to make my main point ... SOS matters. Big Sky, MVFC, and distant 3rd Southern are ahead of Colonial. So now even Southern looks like better conference than Colonial.

 

[fourthandshort]

It will be interesting to see the hurry up offense of Incarnate Word versus the time consuming offense of NDSU.

NDSU just put clamps on #6 Samford, who had been averaging 38 ppg, and got just 9 against Bison. Samford ranked 6th in passing in FCS. IW ranks 2nd. Fordham and EKU ranked 1 and 3, and both got bounced in playin game against weaker playoff teams that got bounced next game easily

That said .. I think IW pass game is another level. But we'll see what happens .. hurry up can cause problems or backfire against a good team.

HC putting up an early fight against SDSU.

 

[fdbird83]

It will be interesting to see the hurry up offense of Incarnate Word versus the time consuming offense of NDSU.

IW destroyed SIU early in the season in San Antonio.

 

[fourthandshort]

SDSU going to win .. but HC held their own. Its 41-21 .. but the game was closer than score.

 

[Aggie]

Once again 2 of the last 4 are from the MVFC. Year in year out lots of these “playoff” teams would be middle of the pack in the MVFC.

 

[Virginia Redbird]

I did not know whether to put this in the Former Redbird Player thread or here but settled here in the FCS Playoffs. The University of the Immaculate Word beat #2 seed Sacramento State on their own field in a crazy offensive game 66-63. Former Redbird wide receiver Taylor Grimes made the winning TD catch. It was a clutch catch (and almost got away from him) to win the game. I really hated to lose Grimes. I thought he was going to be really good. Well, he is and he found a team that actually has a passing offense. Taylor started out strong for UIW in the big win over the Egyptian Dogs to begin the season and now travels to the Fargo Dome to take on the Bison. Taylor ended up the night with 5 receptions for 53 yards a one huge TD.

Well done Mr. Grimes and best of luck against the Bison. I sincerely hope the UIW Cardinals knock the Bison out of the playoffs.

Taylor is not a Redbird anymore but still a Cardinal! Best of luck.

 

[Metamoron]

NDSU has not woke up yet. Down 16-0 halfway through first quarter. Have run about 6 plays and have given up 2 TDs and a safety.

 

[fdbird83]

NDSU has not woke up yet. Down 16-0 halfway through first quarter. Have run about 6 plays and have given up 2 TDs and a safety.

16-3 after 1.

 

[ISUBU]

NDSU has not woke up yet. Down 16-0 halfway through first quarter. Have run about 6 plays and have given up 2 TDs and a safety.

NDSU making lots of mistakes. Their QB has had good protection, but overthrown passes, dropped passes, etc. First down at the two and they hold...ended withfirld goal. Boneheaded play on kick return led to a safety. Bad bad bad.

 

[fdbird83]

The Bison have got things turned around up 17-16 at half. UIW was up 16-3 with 4th and goal at the one. QB in the shotgun and center snaps the ball before QB is ready. Bison get the ball back on downs and have all the momentum now.