Around FCS: A Perfect Playoff World

NCAA Football Betting Lines

04/10/2008 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - In a perfect world, every league that wanted an automatic playoff bid would get one.

Also, Blue Hen fans of Delaware would coexist peacefully with those Wildcats from Villanova. You might even have the Montana and Montana State faithful sitting down to share tailgate meals and mutual respect. The HBCUs and non- HBCUs would find common ground and common opponents.

And, the FCS playoffs would continue to be the best way to decide a national championship.

Last week, we discussed plans by the NCAA football playoff committee to expand the playoff field from 16 to 20 teams within a couple of years. Some of the feedback I received this week got me thinking about an even better expansion plan.

If expansion is inevitable, why not take the field to 24 teams in 2010? And why not find a way to allow all the conferences who want to compete in the postseason to have access to automatic bids?

Since 1987, we've lived in a near-perfect playoff world, with 16 teams going into the championship tournament. Eight auto bids, eight at-large bids. For more than a decade, the Big Sky Conference, the Colonial Athletic Association (formerly the Atlantic 10 and before that the Yankee Conference), the Gateway Conference, the MEAC, the Ohio Valley Conference, the Patriot League, the Southern Conference and the Southland Conference have enjoyed auto bids.

But with the continuing growth of FCS and the changing face of some new conferences, the time is at hand for an expansion of the auto bids. A 20-team playoff field will allow for two more auto bids, but that could be just a stop-gap, with other leagues sure to pound at the NCAA's doors in the near future.

The Northeast Conference has begun offering scholarships in the past two years, and some believe it is only a matter of time before the NEC moves close to the full compliment of 63 grants-in-aid offered by other FCS schools.

The Big South has been around in football since only 2002, but has shown rapid growth. Coastal Carolina nearly earned an at-large bid in 2005 and then gave the Big South its first playoff representative by cracking the field in 2006.

The Great West has earned respect with Cal Poly knocking off powerhouse Montana on the road in the 2005 playoffs to advancing to the quarterfinals. Before moving on with South Dakota State into the Gateway Conference for the 2008 season, Great West member North Dakota State earned additional plaudits with two wins over FBS teams in 2007, and rose to the upper reaches of the Sportsbook Betting Lines poll

The NEC and the Big South will be auto-bid eligible by 2010, when the NCAA adds those two additional automatic berths. The Great West, with the entrance of North Dakota and South Dakota this season, needs just one more team to become eligible.

There has been talk of University of the Pacific restarting its once-storied football program thanks to the financial backing of longtime booster and San Diego Chargers owner Alex Spanos, and there has also reportedly been dialog between San Diego and the Great West as the Toreros contemplate going to scholarship football.

When, not if, the Great West becomes auto-bid eligible, it will be a league that should be among the top five or six conferences in FCS. It wouldn't come as a shock to many fans to see one of the Great West teams one day win a national championship.

So that would give us 11 conferences battling for 10 auto bids. There are 14 FCS conferences overall and the other three - the Ivy League, the Southwest Athletic Conference and the non-scholarship Pioneer Football League - don't seek auto bids for a variety of reasons.

But what if things change with one of those leagues? There is little doubt that most Ivy League players, coaches and athletic directors support - at least privately - the idea of the Ivy League champion competing in the playoffs.

It has always seemed somewhat hypocritical to this writer and many FCS fans that the presidents of the Ivy League allow postseason competition for its athletes in every sport but football.

Is it any more difficult on Ivy League athletes to handle academics and athletics in football than to juggle them in postseason basketball, or some other sport?

There is reason to believe that the Ivy League's postseason football ban will become as much a part of history as those hallowed ivy-covered buildings when several influential presidents finally retire in the next few years.

The point is that the NCAA should be ready to go to 24 teams as soon as the Great West and the Ivy League are ready to sign on the automatic bid bottom line, and the football committee should be doing everything in its power to convince the Ivy League to play playoff ball.

Most people don't see the SWAC changing its view that classics and league championships are more important than competing for a national title. And the PFL shows little sign that it will change its mission statement.

Should there be a PFL or SWAC school that proves itself playoff-worthy, there are plenty of ways for teams from those leagues to earn at-large bids, with 12 such entries available in a reconstructed 24-team playoff field.

If a 24-team tournament had been in place last season, PFL champion Dayton and SWAC divisional runner-up Alabama A&M would have been likely to make the field.

As for the power conferences like the Big Sky, CAA, Gateway, and/or SoCon, all would be in favor of any system that gets more of its schools into the playoffs.

A 24-team playoff field would also help leagues like the Southland, the OVC, the MEAC and the Patriot have more chance of getting multiple teams into postseason play.

The top eight teams would be seeded in a 24-team bracket and would receive byes in the first week of play, while the other 16 teams would battle to earn their way into the second round. Having eight seeds, at a minimum, would increase the value of the regular season as teams audition for those important first-round byes.

While many of us have loved the success of the 16-team bracket, we could grow just as fond of a 24-team tournament that is inclusive of all FCS conferences.

That would be a perfect playoff world.