The Big Sky seems to be pretty dominant with over half of the byes. I'm guessing that after the next two games, that will drop.

Does any other team have both of its remaining games against other teams also on the predicted bracket?

I think these projections don’t look at possible future reasons, it’s as if the playoffs start today. Might be less rosy in two weeks

Feels like false hopes to me.

Honestly, this would mean Davis wins one or both of the next two games. I could easily see them 8-3

Our playoffs begin two weeks early.

I hope our first game is a new opponent. Lots of current and former conference mates in that bracket.

I could see a #4 seed if we win both of our final 2 games. However, I think we will be the underdog going into the EWU game and probably 50/50 or the underdog going into the Sac game.

What happens in regards to the playoffs if we get blown out in both of these games...?

Yeah, only way we’re #4 is if we win twice.

Blown out twice I bet we’re still in but would 100% be on the road.

What happens if we blow out 2 opponents? Bye, and then host?

Yes, if we blow out EWU and Sac we'll definitely be a high seed with a bye in the first round and then host. That would be the best possible scenario for us but highly unlikely.

Heck, even 2 close wins, and we're 10-1.... The board seems more pessimistic than normal... we're 8-1, and have 2 home games with likely sellouts. EWU has lost twice recently... what a season.

I wouldn't call myself pessimistic, but definitely skeptical. I'm very happy that we're essentially a lock for the playoffs right now, but I think it's also important to be objective. We VERY easily could be sitting at like 3 more losses than we have right now against a relatively weak schedule.

If we get outplayed in both but win both by a single point, we’re basically guaranteed a bye. EW will be a top 10 team this week and wouldn’t drop much with a close road loss. Then they’ll probably beat PSU so they’d probably end the year at worst in the 10-12 range. Sac could be a top-10 team by the time we play them (don’t know the other results in front of them this week plus who knows what happens next week) so they’d probably end up in the same 10-14 range. So we’d have an FBS win plus two wins over playoff teams who will probably host games in that scenario.

Totally understandable. We’re going to find out a lot about this team the next two weeks. Going 2-0 would probably be the most surprising result but it’s not like either Sac or EW is peak NDSt where if you lose by 15 it’s a good result. No set of results the next two weeks will truly surprise me.

Here's another current bracket prediction that I hope doesn't happen. I'm hoping we never travel to EWU for a playoff game ever again.



https://www.inforum.com/bison-media-zone/mens-sports/football/7270699-2021-FCS-Bracketology-2.0

BlueGoldAg, I think this one is even less realistic. Would the committee put three Big Sky teams in the same bracket? If they were thinking about geographic proximity, I could see it, but they also have Villanova possibly coming all the way from Philly to play Sac State, et al.

No idea where the bracketologist is getting Bryant (5-4) on that list. They're currently 5th in the Northeast Conference, a Conference that Sacred Heart is on top of with a 6-3 Overall record...I guess Bryant has the tiebreaker, beating Sacred Heart early in the season. Man, that Northeast Conference looks like a duffer auto-bid, what a crock. Sacred Heart got smoked by Dartmouth.

Davidson...ugh. Where the heck is South Dakota?

Do Jackson State, Mercer or Prairie View get any kind of consideration for auto-bid? All currently tops in the Southland and Southwest Athletic Conference...

Weren't there 3 Big Sky teams in one bracket in 2018? I think Weber was #2, EWU was #3, and UCD was #6.

And they have South Dakota State playing a first round game and North Dakota State with a bye…

I hope the selection committee doesn't place geographical proximity as there #1 priority for playoff pairings. Thant would obviously penalize conferences like the Big Sky that will likely have multiple bids. I also do not think it is fair at all to lump some of the strongest contenders against each other in the the early rounds while weaker programs may get easy opponents just because of geography.

The Aggie women's basketball team has been unfairly penalized geographically in the NCAA Tournament when they were sent to Stanford in the first round just because of proximity on a couple of occasions.

During the Dll days as i recall we lost to J street during the regular season and had them for the first round of the playoffs. I think we lost again. I guess if geographical proximity was a factor in the bracket it doesn’t get much closer than across the causeway.

As a fan, I hope we don’t end up playing a big sky team as the first game. It may be good for travel costs but one thing that makes playoffs interesting is playing teams from different regions.

1988 a terrible year. Ags had defeated Slack 18 consecutive years. Regular season game was in Davis. Looked like it was going to get down to whoever had the last possession. Slack had a phenom named Mark (?) Young. He killed us. They won 31-28. Come playoff time we hosted them in a first round game. Conventional wisdom was that through experience we made a better bid to the NCAA committee for hosting. Slack won that 35-14 in a game "that was not as close as the score would indicate."

The last time I checked the D-II playoffs were strictly regional with the field divided into four geographical regions.

At least in that instance each team would have to win at least one game (or in Weber's case, two) to face another Big Sky team. Was no guarantee it would happen.

Do we know if they try to avoid rematches in the first two rounds? UCD-Montana wouldn't be a rematch so there's no issue there, but EW plays both teams this year. I wonder if they wouldn't want a guaranteed rematch for EW's first game. Obviously if a rematch happens down the line, oh well (like UCD-EW in 2018).

I honestly think it should go solely by ranking, like March Madness. #1 through #8 get the auto-bye, then your #9 team plays #24 or whatever auto-bid puff conference champion has to offer. The point of the playoffs is mixing it up, airfare be damned, I want to see a team like Montana play Kennesaw State, I want to see EWU take on a UT-Martin, mix the damn thing up.

One of the best games I ever saw was the Aggies hosting Northern Iowa, by wins and losses, you'd think Davis would've dominated, but UNI played a hard fought game and the quality of their conference showed as they had a pretty good game plan.

Totally agree!

It's much easier because of 64 teams vs 24 plus less travel (they're in pods of 4 so the winners of the 1st round don't travel to a new site for the next round) but in March Madness they do try to keep teams from the same conference away from each other as much as possible. I don't think they ever match up teams from the same conference in the 1st round and when possible, they try not to let two teams from the same conference meet until the regional finals.

That's because you have a lower percentage of teams from one conference. Google tells me the record for most teams from a conference in March Madness is 11, so less than 1/6 of the teams (this was a 68 team tourney). If the Big Sky gets 5, that's more than 1/5 (5/24). Second most in the NCAA tournament is 9, which is only 1/7th of the teams from one conference. So it's easier to spread things out. And the travel is potentially easier. Assuming you're not a 14-16 seed, you can get away with sending a 13 seed West Coast team out east (or vice versa) because if they win, they don't travel before the next game. If you send UCD to play, say, at Villanova in football and we win, then we have to fly back to Davis only to travel again a few days later.

I definitely agree though that it's fun to see teams that don't play each other face off. Always nice to see something new.

D-I March Madness works on a much larger budget (ticket sales, broadcast rights, souvenir sales....) than BCS football. All the games are in neutral arenas. Transporting a basketball team with 12 players and uniforms is cheaper than transporting a football team with its larger roster and equipment. Look at women's basketball which generates less revenue and runs the first couple of rounds at campus sites and you get less travel like UCD to Stanford. Same with lower division basketball...more concern about travel costs, campus sites, more regional games.

I do recall that in the D-II days we had some teams come to Davis from a distance. Lehigh? Bethune-Cookman? Northern Michigan? My memory makes a fool of me more and more these days, but I think they all traveled here for play-off games. As I mentioned in another post, D-II football now breaks the playoffs into four geographical regions, or it did the last time I looked.

Austin Peay traveled to Sac in their lone playoff game in the BCS era...(and gave them a lesson.)

Here is someone who thinks the Ags are a lock regardless of how they do in their final two games:



More playoff possibilities here:

https://www.missourivalleybeat.com/post/pre-week-11-fcs-playoffs-snapshot

We definitely want to beat either both EWU and Sac or at least one of them so we don't either up with this kind of geographically biased, predicted bracket:



https://herosports.com/fcs-football-2021-playoff-predictions-10-bzbz/

He is correct.