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In an emergency meeting held on Sunday, the NCAA Football Championship Committee made a change to the format for the FCS playoff schedule this year. The field was set to be expanded to 20 teams for the first time in its history, but the committee now expects that there may be as few at 12 teams that are playoff eligible by their guidelines. The committee, which is comprise of athletic directors from FCS schools across the country, voted 12-2 to reduce the field to 12 for this year, which is how many the playoff field had from 1982 through 1985. The top four teams will be given a first round bye and the remaining 8 teams will play Thanksgiving weekend with the winners advancing to the quarterfinal round.

When asked why there were so few teams eligible this year, committee member Steve Parsons from the University of San Diego replied, "We think a lot of it has to do with Montana not winning or sharing the Big Sky Conference title, which many believe is the seventh sign of the apocolypse. It also could be Indiana State having a winning season. The bottom line is, we were afraid we'd have no excuse to leave a team from the Pioneer out of the field, or have to put in a 6-5 team to prevent Dayton or Jacksonville from getting an at-large berth."

89Hen wrote:

When asked why there were so few teams eligible this year, committee member Steve Parsons from the University of San Diego replied, "We think a lot of it has to do with Montana not winning or sharing the Big Sky Conference title, which many believe is the seventh sign of the apocolypse.

http://web1.ncaa.org/onlineDir/exec/spo ... &sport=MWP

putter wrote:In order to right the world, the commitee should just let the teams in by attendance and forget about record. That way they can get the highest bids for every round and then determine seeding starting with the largest geographic state the teams are from..

89Hen wrote:

putter wrote:In order to right the world, the commitee should just let the teams in by attendance and forget about record. That way they can get the highest bids for every round and then determine seeding starting with the largest geographic state the teams are from..

Might as well.

At least I can feel good about being opposed to expanding the field to 20 from the start. The problem was never that there were too many good teams being left out, it was that they were often scraping the bottom of the barrel for 15 and 16.

putter wrote:In order to right the world, the commitee should just let the teams in by attendance and forget about record. That way they can get the highest bids for every round and then determine seeding starting with the largest geographic state the teams are from..

89Hen wrote:

putter wrote:In order to right the world, the commitee should just let the teams in by attendance and forget about record. That way they can get the highest bids for every round and then determine seeding starting with the largest geographic state the teams are from..

Might as well.

At least I can feel good about being opposed to expanding the field to 20 from the start. The problem was never that there were too many good teams being left out, it was that they were often scraping the bottom of the barrel for 15 and 16.

dbackjon wrote:20 out of 100+ teams is not a lot

There are still some very good teams that will be left out, but only because of the criteria used by the NCAA, and the realities of FCS football. Many teams play a bodybag game, or two, which gives them a loss. and teams in the West, especially, have little choice but to schedule a D2 team so to get at least 5 home games.

Southern Utah is a prime example this year. Two close FBS losses, and a local D2 game put them out of consideration. But they are a solid team.