Bracketology Breakdown
Six At-Large Bids: Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota State, Eastern Washington, Richmond, Virginia Military
First Five Out: Villanova, Murray State, UC-Davis, Monmouth, Incarnate Word
The FCS Selection Committee made a surprise release of its Top Ten this last week. Seems like most of the correct teams were there, but the order might have had a few wondering their reasoning. It may have just been a rough draft, without getting into the crazy over-analyzing of statistics they do the weekend of the official release.
The more confounding information dropped this last week was that the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference is still available to snag their conference’s automatic bid. The internet blew up with this news flash and here’s why...
- The conference only has three members playing this season. This has been justified by the NCAA as being a minimum requirement, considering the crazy COVID situation.
- Of those three teams, Howard is ineligible for postseason play because of APR violations. The NCAA has indicated that even though they are ineligible, they still count as one of the minimum required teams.
- The final part of this issue is that these teams were to have ALL played each other. Howard, located in Washington, DC, has had travel restrictions both to and from South Carolina. One of the other two teams playing is South Carolina State. Howard has NOT played South Carolina State and indicated this last weekend, their second game against Delaware State was their season finale.
Needless to say, this is a conundrum. And the NCAA FCS Selection Committee is in a bad spot. It’s widely regarded that it’s unfair for one of two teams in a traditionally weak Mid-Eastern Conference to receive a bid, when the conference has not won a playoff game since before the turn of the century. Here, we’re going to assume the MEAC eventually gets excluded, as their conference has not fulfilled all the conference requirements to attain their automatic. We’ll change course, if the NCAA verifies the bid before Selection Day.
Elsewhere, some changes to the playoff tree and it was expected. Eastern Washington won an elimination game with UC-Davis in the Big Sky. This coming week sees three automatic bids set to be determined. Kennesaw State goes to Monmouth for the Big South, Jacksonville State goes to Murray State for the Ohio Valley and Sacred Heart goes to Duquesne for the first ever Northeast Championship game. A few other teams could clinch bids with wins and help. That last week though, is going to be as hectic as ever. We’ll get into that more next week.
Bids By Conference
Big Sky (2): *Weber State, Eastern Washington
Big South (1): *Kennesaw State
Colonial (3): *James Madison, Delaware, Richmond
Missouri Valley (3): *North Dakota State, North Dakota, South Dakota State
Northeast (1): *Duquesne
Ohio Valley (1): *Jacksonville State
Patriot (1): *Holy Cross
Pioneer (1): *Davidson
Southern (2): *East Tennessee State, Virginia Military
Southland (1): *Sam Houston State
* denotes predicted automatic qualifier
