Selection Story

[vike_king]

November 19, 2006


The CSN Way: Beautiful Losers


David Coulson, CSN senior columnist





For Portland State, it was a reasonable thought.

A 7-4 record and the Vikings’ third-place finish in the Big Sky Conference might not have been eye-popping to the NCAA Division I Championship Committee.

But Portland State had an impressive trump card in its arsenal — a schedule that included three games against I-A opponents.

There was that season-opening win over a good New Mexico team and two losses to members of an exclusive club, the BCS top-25, that were more impressive than they seemed from observing the final scores.

When hints began to be dropped in the past couple of weeks that a four-loss team might work its way into the playoff consideration, it seemed to many that PSU was the squad at the top of the committee’s list.

The selection committee picked not one, but two four-loss teams for the 16-team playoff field — the first time a four-loss squad had made the playoffs since Idaho in 1995.

But one name was never called when ESPN News announced the pairings at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon.

Portland State.

With the team gathered together to watch the playoff selections on Sunday morning in Portland, Ore., the Vikings began to get queasy right out of the gate when the second bracket appeared on the television screen.

The news was bad for Portland State. Furman was traveling to ... Montana State for a first-round game. Coastal Carolina, another team hoping for one of those elusive eight at-large bids, had already been revealed in the first pairing with No. 1 seed and defending national champion Appalachian State.

When Eastern Illinois, like Montana State another four-loss team, was revealed in the bottom half of the draw, Vikings heart sank.

One final at-large spot remained to be filled as the final pairing was shown. When Southern Illinois’ name flashed on the TV, Portland State realized quickly that its season was over.

A few minutes later, committee chairman John Hardt, the athletic director at Bucknell, revealed the reason the eight-man committee had chosen Montana State over its Big Sky rival.

A 14-0 win by the Bobcats over Portland State on Oct. 14 in Bozeman, Mont. gave the edge to Montana State. A 19-10 victory over Colorado by MSU in its season opener, six wins their final seven games and a narrow loss to No. 2 seed Montana helped the Bobcats overcome embarrassing losses to Division II Chadron State and Big Sky weakling Eastern Washington.

Portland State wasn’t the only team to taste disappointment on Sunday.

As expected, strength of schedule issues killed the hopes of undefeated San Diego and 10-1 Monmouth to make the playoffs. Instead, San Diego will keep its scheduled game with UC Davis on Saturday and will travel to Monmouth the following weekend for the Gridiron Classic matchup between the champions of the Pioneer Football League and the Northeast Conference.

Two other four loss teams — squads that would have been potentially scary opponents for almost any team in the field — couldn’t muster enough support to crack this exclusive club.

Northern Iowa put together enough of the magic from its 2005 ride to the national championship game to beat the top two teams in the Gateway Football Conference, Youngstown State and Illinois State. But the maddeningly inconsistent Panthers couldn’t fill in the chuck holes in their resume caused by a loss at home to the top-ranked Division II team, North Dakota.

The Panthers can also kick themselves for defensive lapses that proved costly in lopsided losses to GFC bottom feeder Western Illinois and playoff-bound Southern Illinois.

Of course none of that would have mattered if Northern Iowa had held on for a win, instead of a one-point loss to Iowa State. With that UNI would have matched Montana State and Portland State with a I-A notch in its belt, to say nothing of what would have been a secure 8-3 record.

Wofford could be one of the hottest teams in all of the Championship Subdivision right now. The Terriers closed the season with five consecutive wins, but they turned on the jets too late after a 2-4 start that included gut-wrenching losses to Appalachian State and South Carolina by a touchdown and to playoff-bound Coastal Carolina by three points in another wild game.

For teams on the edge of the playoffs, like Lehigh, Delaware State and Tennessee State, their fate had been already decided by losses on Saturday.

Lehigh lost the Patriot League auto bid and an outright championship when it was hammered by Lafayette, while Tennessee State’s hopes of sharing the OVC with Tennessee-Martin and Eastern Illinois came crashing down with a loss to Eastern Kentucky.

Delaware State could have put pressure on the committee by finishing 9-2 and beating Howard, but the Hornets lost to make the committee’s decision easy.

There also was the usual frustration in the Ivy League, where Yale and Princeton shared the crown after wins on Saturday. Princeton would have advanced to the playoffs as a potential Ivy League auto qualifier, but the ancient eight -- we’re talking about those out-of-touch, old geezers serving as presidents of the Ivy League schools, not the likable alternate nickname for the venerable conference -- doesn't do NCAA football championships.

Every other sport on the Ivy League campuses is allowed to compete towards potential NCAA championships, but football, due to archaic rules established by these brain-dead, out-of-touch administrators.

The Winners

While the teams selected were not that surprising, some of the brackets raised a few eyebrows on Sunday.

Games between No. 1 seed Appalachian State and Coastal Carolina, No. 2 seed Montana and McNeese State and No. 3 seed Massachusetts and Lafayette were about as predictable as you could get.

But the biggest shocker was James Madison being sent to No. 4 seed Youngstown State. A couple of weeks earlier, people were arguing the merits of JMU getting a seed over YSU, but now you have these CS heavyweights battling it out in the first round.

JMU fans expected to have a home game against MEAC auto bid winner Hampton, a school that is just a short drive from Harrisonburg, Va. But instead, Hampton got a home game, although it is against a team no one really wants to see in their bracket, dangerous New Hampshire.

The JMU-YSU matchup smacks of a television marriage, with this game being selected for the ESPN2 7:30 p.m. slot next Saturday. The other nationally televised game will be Appalachian State and Coastal Carolina at 3:30 p.m.

Another curious choice was putting Illinois State in the same bracket at Eastern Illinois. These teams played each other Sept. 16 at Illinois State, with the Redbirds beating EIU 44-30.

The committee did something similar last year when Montana and Cal Poly faced off just several weeks after the Grizzlies had defeated the Mustangs at home. Cal Poly’s second visit to Missoula, Mont. resulted in a Mustang victory, however.

It would have been just as easy to have sent Southern Illinois to Eastern Illinois for the second year in a row and to have had Illinois State host Tennessee-Martin. UTM will be on the road at SIU, instead.

Every year, at least one team seemingly fit outside of the regional box the NCAA adopted following the 9-11 tragedy in 2001. And this year’s frequent flier award goes to Furman, who will travel to Bozeman, Mont. to take on Montana State in the first round.

The winner of that game gets the honor of playing the defending champion, Appalachian State.

But even with two or three quirks in the pairings, the committee did an excellent job in putting the 16-team field together.

Prediction Time

Last year, I put some future pressure on myself by picking Appalachian State and Northern Iowa to meet in the championship game in Chattanooga, Tenn. on selection Sunday. While it wasn’t going out on a limb to select Appalachian State, taking an unseeded Northern Iowa squad as my other finalist seemed pretty crazy — until the Mountaineers and Panthers showed up for the title game.

I also correctly selected Appalachian State as the national champion.

But anyway, here goes, without a benefit of a safety net.

My first-round winners in the upper side of the bracket are Appalachian State, Montana State, Illinois State and Youngstown State. In the lower half of the draw, my picks are UMass, New Hampshire, Southern Illinois and Montana (I learned my lesson, Griz fans, always picking against the Grizzlies in the first round).

From there, I see ASU, Illinois State, New Hampshire and Montana advancing to the semifinals and those two games setting up an Appalachian State-New Hampshire final.

Backtracking just a bit, I fully expect the winner of the New Hampshire-UMass quarterfinal to eventually end up in Chattanooga.

And with the championship on the line, I see Appalachian State making history as the first back-to-back champion since Georgia Southern pulled off the trick in 1999 and 2000.

Whatever the results, it should be another fun playoff run, all the way to Chattanooga.