CDAGRIZ said:
I was talking with a friend (not an FCS follower) about the bracket when it came out this year. I said it’s great that 4 BSC teams got seeds. I explained how it worked and he said something like, “If they don’t even bother seeding the other 16 teams, why not just make the field the top 8 teams?” I didn’t have a good answer on hand.
Cutting it to 8 is probably extreme, but 12 makes sense to me for two reasons: (1) Making the field would be more of an achievement; and (2) it would reduce the chance of a fluke win by a lower team giving another team a cakewalk to the semifinals. Every team would be more worthy.
Yep, good point there. The 2002 playoff, when that “marginal” (by the polls) Western Kentucky team went all the way makes for an interesting example. Here’s how the first round was laid out, with the four seeds shown in [brackets].
[1] McNeese vs Montana State
[2] Western Illinois vs Eastern Illinois
[3] Georgia Southern vs Bethune-Cookman
[4] Northeastern vs Fordham
Montana vs Northwestern State
Villanova vs Furman
Appalachian State vs Maine
Western Kentucky vs Murray State
To drop down to twelve teams, the logical thing would be to give the four seeds a bye in the first round, dropping their opponents from the bid list. The only bracket change might be to have Eastern Illinois (8-3) replace Murray State (7-4) as the opponent for Western Kentucky. The two were co-champs of the OVC, but Eastern was ranked #10 in the polls, while Murray was #23. This would have bounced the #21, #23, and #24 ranked teams from the field. The other “loss” would be Bethune-Cookman which, even back then, represented one of the weakest conferences in the FCS/1-AA.
But other than that, there would be no difference. The one “upset” of a seeded team (Fordham over Northeastern, 29-24) washed out in the next round. McNeese would have still marched through their side of the bracket to reach the championship game. Western Kentucky would have done the same on their side to face McNeese and win the Nattie.
It's "nice" that a bunch of weak-a** teams get to say they've been in the playoffs. But it also costs
a lot more money and dilutes the quality of the competition.