Sac St is the 4 seed.

If that’s was the actual order we’d be borderline to host a game. Don’t think the conference champs are guaranteed a home game. Two conference champs are behind us since they’re unranked and that list has 6 at large teams behind us also.

I don’t necessarily think we deserve a home game though.

I'd like to clarify the 8-win part to start with. It's no team with 3 or fewer losses rather than 8+ wins. There have been two 8-4 teams that have been left out.

2014 Idaho State went 8-4, best wins over two 7-5 teams, lost two FBS games and to two playoff teams by 3 and 5 points. However, they beat two DII wins so they only had 6 FCS wins. Guessing they got dinged for that.
2013 Youngstown State went 8-4, best win at 7-5 team by 1, lost FBS game, by 18 to No. 1 NDST, by 29 to 8-4 SDST and by 2 to 7-5 Northern Iowa. There were only three 8-win teams in the conference that year and most of the teams played 12 games.

Here's another stat. Since the playoffs expanded in 2013, the Big 3 conferences have gotten at least 11 spots each year but 2013 (got 9 that year) and at least 12 each year from 2014-2018. In 2019 they only got 11. We're ignoring 2020 since it was a smaller bracket.

So if you give the MVFC 5 and the CAA 2, the Big Sky could get 5 and that would still only be 12. The third best team in the CAA is either 6-5 Elon (lost to JMU by 24, Nova by 35 and a 1-10 Wofford team at home by 2) or 7-4 Rhode Island (didn't play JMU, lost to Nova by 44 and other three losses were to two 6-5 teams and a 4-7 team).

There are two conference champs who get autobids that are unranked. However, it doesn't appear the Ivy participates so that takes out No. 20 Dartmouth and No. 24 Princeton. The SWAC plays its own conference championship game so that takes out No. 19 Jackson State.

Mercer is ranked 21 in the STATS poll. They just lost at No. 8 by 3 so they'll probably remain there. Finished the year 7-3 but one of those was an NAIA win. Best team they beat went 6-5.
Stephen F Austin (8-3) is ranked 22 in the STATS poll and won 42-6 this week over a 2-9 team. They lost to Sam Houston by 1. but also lost to a 5-6 team. One win over Lincoln (CA) that I can't even find info on. Beat a 7-4 team as best win.

Others receiving votes last week. You could sell me on 6-5 Northern Iowa (26) as being better than us with a better resume. 27 is Monmouth (7-4) who lost 49-17 to the only good team in their league and by 30 to Holy Cross (28), with their best win being over a 6-5 team. Holy Cross (28) beat Monmouth and UConn, which is a FBS win in name only. VMI (29) just lost again. Chattanooga (30) also just lost again. It doesn't get any better either if you keep going.

TL;DR: I know we're down on the team because of how we finished but once you get into the 20's in the rankings, the quality of team drops significantly and we're better than those teams.

I totally understand the frustration.

There’s clearly an issue on offense. Some here clearly have an issue with the OC and you guys have watched way more of this team than I have so I’ll defer to you. It’s probably partially that and partially QB. How much blame each way? Who knows.

Our defense clearly wasn’t as good as we thought either. “Bend but don’t break” against lesser teams turns into “bend and then break” against better teams. And then you’re on the field the whole game like against EW last week. That means you wear down quicker and get tired. Plus when your offense can’t stay on the field, well, it all adds up.

I think overall we’re at a decent place as a program. Great team in 2018. Solid team that got crushed by a brutal schedule in 2019. Decent team last year that, IIRC, was invited to the playoffs. Decent team this year that should be in the playoffs. We’re a consistently strong team and hopefully that’s helping on the recruiting front.

Yeah, we’ll have to win a road game to play one of the seeded teams.

A couple things…

The playoffs aren’t decided by two games against better teams. I’m guessing if you look at other teams that will get first round road games, they’ll have some bad losses also.

Second, please don’t confuse “Sac is just a better team this year” for “the Aggies weren’t trying”. You really think a team that’s going to the playoffs, facing its rival with a playoff seed and first round bye on the line is just going to roll over and not care? This isn’t a 2-8 team playing out the season.

We’ve pretty much been in agreement that this team wasn’t a top 10 team for a few weeks now. If the EWU game happened Week 5 and this game happened Week 9, we would have been properly seeded all year, which is the late teens. But it just so happens that two of our toughest three games happened in the last two weeks of the season so it leaves a sour taste in everyone’s mouth.

We’re getting in. It might be a road game in the first round but we’ll be in.

Hopefully by finding a QB who can pass the ball consistently in 2022.

More likely to get noticed by the NFL if you're good enough also.

It was definitely a "finally played a good team" reaction. Weber's fine, but they're not what they normally are.

Plus some people are going to look at the box score because it was a big game and see that the result probably should have been worse. An 18-point loss where we get outgained by 100 yards and EWU gets a late TD to make it look worse and maybe we only drop 3-5 spots instead of 4-7 spots.

But yeah, 100% a market correction on our rank.

I have no idea how they settle at Sac St with a 5 seed but EWU at around the 12 seed.

The losses are probably pretty similar overall. Cal (Sac) is better than Mont St (EWU) but EWU's Weber loss by 1 is better than Sac losing by 18 to Northern Iowa.

Assuming Sac beats us, both would have beaten UCD on the road and Montana (Sac in Montana, EWU at home) but EWU also has the UNLV win. EWU beat Southern Utah by 8 more despite being on the road (Sac was at home) and won at Northern Colorado by 46 (Sac won by 3).

I wasn't aware it was possible to give up 42 points in a half and still win a football game, but I guess you learn something new every day. Of course it helps when you score 35 points yourself in that half.

I promise that's not me who wrote that post (saying that because I'm firmly in the "at 8-3 we're for sure in camp").

As for the bracket, what he wrote is he expected Sac St to win out. If that does happen, I doubt we get a home game which means we're at the mercy of whoever selects the bracket as to where we'd have to travel.

How are we only down 11? EW had 280 more yards, is 3-3 on 3rd down and we’ve turned the ball over twice while they haven’t turned it over?

That ball was out. Did we not challenge or are they not allowed?

I know it's not a big deal, but can't he talk about Barriere without being ridiculous about it? Just say the guys is really good. He's definitely not the best player in all of college football and he's absolutely not the best player Hawkins has ever coached against. I mean, he said it himself that he's coached against five Heisman winners. He might not even be the best quarterback Hawkins has coached against at UCD (Trey Lance).

Just say he's really talented and a really hard player to prepare to play against and that he might be the best player in FCS (even if he's not, you could probably make an argument for it).

You mean false positive? That would seem to make sense if a bunch of them tested negative a couple days later.

Seems like a weird situation. The players originally tested positive but then subsequently tested negative, but the positive tests require isolation which is why they couldn't go. But the players are claiming tests weren't mandated but they were forced to take them.

Truth probably lies somewhere in the middle but if it's true that the team is all vaccinated, it seems like a bit much by the city.

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.

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).