Chattanooga Times: Championship Football Game Moved

[danefan]

Actually 12 teams get opening round byes. Presumably the determination will what the bottom 8 teams are, as opposed to the top 12.

"Opening round" has 4 games. Presumably with the last 8 teams in. Twelve other teams get byes to the "first round"

The winners of the opening round games move on to the first round. Of the 12 teams that got byes in the opening round, 4 of them (presumably the top 4 seeds) will play the 4 winners of the opening round games. The other 8 teams will be matched up. Now you have 16 teams and it will operate exactly the same.

The way I see it, it will unfold like this:

Opening Round:
NEC AQ vs. Patriot AQ
MEAC AQ vs. Big South AQ
OVC AQ vs. SLC AQ
Last two at-larges in (CAA 5th vs. Socon 4th, etc.)

First Round
#1 Seed versus winner of NEC vs. Patriot
#2 Seed versus winner of MEAC vs. Big South
#3 Seed versus winner of OVC AQ vs. SLC AQ
#4 Seed versus winner of last two at-larges.
Normal matchup of the remaining 8 teams (geographically, etc...)

That is interesting. Are they going to use regionalization, RPI, etc. to set up those "2nd round games" or have they determined that yet?

AFAIK , it hasn't been determined yet. But I did notice the "curiously" selected language of the expansion which titled the first set of games as "Opening Round" games, leaving the field of 16 playing in the "First Round" games as they always have. I suspect that they did this intentionally to allow the continued application of all of the prior rules to first round games without having to reprint the rules. If I'm correct, I think they will still regionalize in the opening and first rounds. However, that may also mean that the first round games aren't set (location and opponent) until after the opening round is completed. Which could be weird.

[Wildcat Ryan]

They need to just seed all the teams. And stop being so cheap.