Let me start this column by saying I'm highly critical of the FCS playoff committee and the 24-team playoff field this year. While last year I thought the bracket was overall pretty decent, this year's is the worst since 2015.
Some of my biggest complaints include:
- All three Big Sky seeds on one side
- Only one seeded CAA team and four of the six bids being on one side of the bracket
- James Madison not getting a seed
- The MVFC and Southland getting the same number of teams in the field
- And a few teams getting left out of the bracket, led by Indiana State
But the thing is, a lot of my complaints (and the complaints heard around the country) are out of the committee's control.
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By this point, we all should know the first and second-round matchups are based on geography. I hate it, but understand it's probably never going to change. TV viewership and attendance numbers don't make this tournament a money-maker for the NCAA. They aren't going to send a team from out east on a charter flight across the country in consecutive weeks when they can bus them.
Arguing about matchups is useless. If you're going to complain about something, I think it should be about who the committee chooses as the 24 teams in because it is head scratching how some teams get in over others.
But from there, the guidelines given to the playoff committee should be blamed more than the actual committee members when it comes to how the bracket looks once the 24 teams are selected. The regionalization isn't going to change, but there's one thing that handcuffs the playoff committee that does need to change.
And that's having the inability to adjust the bracket once it's formed.
When the voting system is complete for the eight seeds, they can't be adjusted. Same with when the first-round matchups are paired with the seeded teams based off of proximity mandates from the NCAA. So when the full bracket is put on paper, that's just how it shakes out.
And that shouldn't be.
FCS committee chair and Central Arkansas director of athletics Brad Teague joined the Fargo radio station Bison1660 after the selection show and confirmed this.
Here are some notable quotes:
"We set our Top 8 seeds and we put them 1-8 based on how we believe they should be in our national rankings. Once we do that, we don't mess with the integrity of those seeds to try and keep South Dakota State from playing North Dakota State. It just happened to work out that way."
"We're not allowed to move seeds around. Once the seeds are in place, they have to be where they are."
"And then when we start placing the matchups into the bracket, it's all about geography. We have a responsibility to try to have as many drivable games as possible. If teams are within 400 miles, we have to set them together first. And we also try in the second round to have any first-round games with at least one team who would be within 400 miles of that second-round game."
Because of the regionalization, the FCS playoffs will never be a true national tournament. But if the committee is able to look at the bracket, made adjustments as they see fit to add some balance, that will make it closer to being a legit tournament.
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Let's take this year as an example.
The voting for seeds worked out where all three Big Sky seeds were on the same side of the bracket: No. 2 Weber State, No. 3 Eastern Washington and No. 6 UC Davis. That's ridiculous and frankly annoying.
The committee should be able to look at that and decide to move UC Davis either to No. 5 or No. 8 to get the Aggies on the other side of the bracket. You aren't costing teams seeded 5-8 a potential quarterfinal home game anyway if you move them around.
There's also the complaint of having North Dakota State, South Dakota State and James Madison all on the same side of the bracket with those three being popular picks as the actual three best teams in the country. JMU and Delaware are matched up to play No. 8 Colgate. Technically, the committee thinks Colgate is better than the Dukes by seeding the Raiders.
But I bet if you ask all the members who they think would win on a neutral field between JMU and the Raiders, most would say JMU.
So instead of having the preseason prediction of NDSU-JMU in Frisco potentially happen earlier in the quarterfinals, if the committee had the ability to adjust the bracket, they could have sent JMU-Delaware to play No. 2 Weber State while SEMO and Stony Brook get paired with Colgate.
Stony Brook, the favored winner, is only 256 miles and a bus trip away from Colgate.
Making that one adjustment evens out the number of CAA teams on each side of the bracket and also makes the tournament more competitively balanced. However, the guidelines in place don't allow the committee to look at a filled-out 24-team bracket and make these necessary changes.
There are a lot of holes in the FCS playoff selection process. Some of them can't and won't be changed. But giving the committee the freedom to adjust the seeds and the overall bracket is one change that not only is easy to do, but makes a ton of sense.
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