No. 6 Incarnate Word 10-2 lost to South Dakota St at 3-8 Southern Illinois, 1 ranked win (No. 21 NAU)
No. 7 Idaho 9-3 (assuming they win), lost to Oregon, Mont St, UCD. Beat Wyoming, No. 11 ACU and No. 21 NAU.
No. 8 Mercer 10-2 lost to Alabama and 4-6 Samford, no currently ranked wins
No. 9 Montana 8-4 lost today so they'll drop
No. 10 Richmond 10-2 lost to Virginia and 5-7 Wofford. Beat Delaware who would be ranked but didn't play the other 4 ranked teams in their conference.
No. 11 Abilene Christian 8-4 lost today so they'll drop
No. 12 SE Missouri St 9-3 lost today so they'll drop
No. 13 Rhode Island 10-2 lost to Minnesota and Delaware. 1 ranked win over No. 24 New Hampshire
No. 14 Illinois St 9-3 lost to Iowa, NDST, Missouri St. No ranked wins.

So you would need four of those teams to jump us. You could sell me on Idaho having a better resume and they only lost to us by 2. After that, we've got a better resume than everyone else. Yes, losing to a 4-8 Sac St would hurt. But we've also got a win over Idaho, who will get a bye, and Montana, who will probably get a seed. None of those teams besides Idaho have wins anywhere close to that.

I totally understand the hesitation after the last couple years and hopefully we just win this thing and everything is moot. But one game shouldn't sink a team. Just like beating Sac last year didn't guarantee us a spot either.

We definitely could drop out. I'm just saying I don't think it's some sure thing that if we win we get 4 or 5 but if we lose we get 9 or lower.

I think we could be. As far as resume's go, there's a big drop off after 5. We might not end up at 5 if we lose, but I think we still deserve a top-8.

They had two guys open in the back of the end zone on that TD. That can't happen.

If the committee uses the ratings, we’re going to be behind. But resume, we’ve got a better one than they do, even with this win. It’s going to be close though.

That’s not good.

NDSt up 21-17 late 3rd.

Glad North Dakota St woke up. Hopefully they can pull out the victory. Everything I've read this week says that South Dakota needs to win to get the 4 seed as long as we beat Sac. Hopefully that's the case and we take care of business against Sac.

I wasn’t aware they had turf. Thought it was still grass. That makes me feel better about the game. Was a little worried about a crappy muddy soaked field making things ugly.

In case you were wondering if it's just the FCS that makes weird ranking decisions, it's not!

Last week in the CFP rankings, Miami was 9 and Alabama was 10. BYU (6th) and Tennessee (7th) and lost so they dropped. Miami was on a bye while Alabama beat FCS Mercer 52-7. Apparently beating an FCS team is so impressive it warranted Alabama jumping Miami to 7 while Miami was 8.

Let's hope he runs with the ball away from his body again on Saturday. Just asking for the ball to be knocked out when you're that careless with it.

Projected playoff field based on projected results in the last week
https://herosports.com/fcs-football-2024-playoff-predictions-6-bzbz/



Still seems strange to have South Dakota dropping to 9 after losing to the No. 1 team but all I care about is that 4 next to UC Davis.

but to do that South Dakota State would have to underperform the expected score and/or Davis would need to score more than Massey would predict. — Riveraggie

That's potentially good for us then since Massey likes Sac and only has us winning by 6. So if we can put it on Sac, that would be a big boost to our rating.

It will be tight. I think the Stats poll would move us up to 4 but as Riveraggie posted, the committee doesn't use that anymore. In Massey we're 5 and SD is 4. That one has us closer to being the 4 than SD is to being the 3. However, Sagarin has SD in 4 but right behind Montana St. We're kind of in our own little area, far back of 4 but far ahead of 6.

But if the committee looks at who you beat, we've clearly got the better resume. We have 2 wins way better than anything SD has and our third best win (Southern Utah) is on par with their best win. Losses are fairly similar.

Might come across as a homer pick but if I was voting, I would say South Dakota has to win on Saturday to pass us. FWIW, I had Sac above us at the end of last year despite us winning H2H because I thought their resume was better, so I try not to be some blind homer.

I will say this is quite the welcome change from the past couple years. I much prefer talk of "will we get the 4 seed or the 5 seed if we beat Sac" as opposed to "are we going to even make the playoffs".

Likely nothing fishy. Lot of voters will overreact to a win or a loss regardless of how good/bad it is.

Week 8:
No. 4 South Dakota 1237 points
No. 5 UC Davis 1172 points

South Dakota loses by 3 in OT at No. 3 South Dakota State
UC Davis doesn't play

Week 9:
No. 4 UC Davis 1196 points
No. 5 South Dakota 1174 points

So that's a swing of 87 points in our direction (+24 for us, -63 for SD). This week we saw a 70 point swing in their direction after fairly similar circumstances. Beat Sac, have SD lose to NDSt and we should jump up to 4.

https://theanalyst.com/na/2024/11/stats-perform-fcs-top-25-poll-12

We're only 24 points behind SD in the poll but are 79 points ahead of UIW in 6 and 143 ahead of Idaho at 7. So win and we're 5 at the worst and being that close to SD is a good thing. We were 46 points ahead of them this week so that suggests that any loss by SD and a win by UCD should be enough to jump us to 4 in the poll.

Not much different than South Dakota losing by 3 in OT on the road to No.3 while we didn't play and we jumped South Dakota in the polls. Should sort itself out this week though, just like which team should be No. 1. As long as they keep the same logic if we beat Sac and SD loses, I'm fine with it.

Those are just last weeks rankings with the records updated.

Not to mention we're guaranteed another home game at this point so if you bring too much, you can just bring the leftovers to the next game.