They don't always. In 2015 NDSU was the MVFC auto but was seeded below Illinois St who they shared the title with. But last year I'm pretty sure the committee chair even called out the fact that Maine being the CAA auto got them a seed over JMU.
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I just hope we don't have to watch 6 CAA teams shit the bed again this year. Or see all 5 MVFC teams on one side of the bracket.
The former seems a less than 1% likelihood this year. The latter isn't possible within the rules anymore.
However, what would be frustrating is if they set the seeds something like NDSU at #1, SDSU at #5, and Illinois St at #8 (so they're all on the top side of the bracket) then feed UNI into SDSU or Illinois St but add SIU as one of the last teams in the field and stick them on the bottom side of the bracket just to satisfy the requirement that conferences with 4 or more teams in the playoffs can't have all their teams in one half of the bracket.
Regionalization is D2
Yeah, after the 2015 season when all 5 MVFC teams where on the bottom side of the bracket. They're allowed to add an extra flight if they have to do so to split up the teams from a conference with 4 or more teams in the field.
Of course in 2015 they wouldn't have even had to add a flight. They fed UNI into #6 Portland St that year which was obviously a flight same as it would've been to feed them into any seed on the top side of the bracket. They could've swapped them with Colgate/New Hampshire on the top side of the bracket feeding into #5 JMU since neither of those schools were within 400 miles of JMU either.
I don't see how you separate SDSU, UNI, and ISUr. I also don't see how you separate Montana, Weber, and Sac St. I think those are the #3-8 teams, but I don't know how to sequence them. The committee won't seed it that way. They'll seed another CAA team or worse. I'd probably go Griz, Weber, Sac St, SDSU, ISU, UNI. The committee is going to leave one of the Valley teams unseeded so we will see them in the dome the first Saturday in December.
Considering the injuries to the other MVFC teams, it probably would be fair to not seed them all. It's a mess. I don't know which of the three teams is the most gutted. All have lost their starting QB. I think they've all lost either their star RB or WR(or both if you're UNI). Even with 3 or 4 MVFC seeds this year, I don't expect the Valley to do all that much outside of NDSU. Just too many critical losses.