Unbalanced bracket

[BisonFanAnn]

I don't know that this year's bracket is worse for us than last year, and we all know how that turned out.

Poor Fighting Squawks - they so badly wanted to get into the playoffs. Definitely a case of "be careful what you wish for".

[1978Bison]

Right side bracket 10 losses total, left side of bracket 5 losses

[Mr Pep Band]

Average Sagarin Rank for NDSU's side- 61.75

Average Sagarin Rank for EWU's side- 80.25

[89MTBISON]

Average Sagarin Rank for NDSU's side- 61.75

Average Sagarin Rank for EWU's side- 80.25

Good grief, that sucks! Toughest regular season schedule ever for the Bison, followed by toughest road to Frisco, sheesh. Thanks for the info.

[Professor Chaos]

Had they seeded it like they should've it would've been a lot more balanced (my top 8 from my final AGS regular season poll):

1) NDSU
2) EWU
3) JMU
4) SHSU
5) The Citadel
6) JSU
7) SDSU
8) UND

...but then you had JSU's AD on the selection committee.

[89MTBISON]

Had they seeded it like they should've it would've been a lot more balanced (my top 8 from my final AGS regular season poll):

1) NDSU
2) EWU
3) JMU
4) SHSU
5) The Citadel
6) JSU
7) SDSU
8) UND

What would the rest of your bracket look like? Just curious.

[Professor Chaos]

What would the rest of your bracket look like? Just curious.

Meh... at that point it gets really hard to project since it's based completely without on-field merit taken into consideration. My "how to fix the playoffs" theory ever since they've gone to 24 teams is to seed the top 8 and then "pool" teams into groups of 4 for the last 16 separating them into seed lines like the NCAA basketball tournament does. Had that been the case this is how I would've had it in addition to my top 8.

3 seeds (9-12)
Chattanooga
YSU
Richmond
Villanova

4 seeds (13-16)
CSU
Wofford
UCA
Samford

5 seeds (17-20)
Cal Poly
Lehigh
Illinois St
UNH

6 seeds (21-24)
Weber St
NC A&T
San Diego
St Francis

Then you can match up the 3 seeds with the 6 seeds and the 4 seeds with the 5 seeds geographically and even feed the winners for the 3/6 matchups into the 5-8 seeds and the winners of the 4/5 matchups into the 1-4 seeds geographically. Hence my perfect bracket would've been something like this:

Wofford vs Lehigh -> #1 NDSU
YSU vs St Francis -> #8 UND
Samford vs Illinois St -> #4 SHSU
Richmond vs NC A&T -> #5 The Citadel
UCA vs Cal Poly -> #2 EWU
Villanova vs San Diego -> #7 SDSU
CSU vs UNH -> #3 James Madison
Chattanooga vs Weber St -> #6 JSU

Of course that would be expecting way too little penny pinching from the NCAA. This year though my seeded bracket wouldn't have generated many more flights than what happened with their current model (last week 7 of 8 second round games required the visiting team to fly).

[89MTBISON]

Thanks. Yeah no way the NCAA will pay for travel like that in the first or second rounds. Unfortunately we are stuck with regionalization as a priority from them.

[ndsubison1]

Or just give credit to the teams that beat them. YSU seems to be healthier than most of the season and may have been good enough to be seeded