2018 Playoff thread

[noryan34]

No, no it's not really. Maybe when looked at in the context of who got in from some of the weaker conferences, but that happens every year. That's the nature of they way the playoffs and selection process is set up. One of ISUb's wins was a D2 this year. They lost convincingly to UNI, who got in ahead of them.

Crazy fast turn around though. they were a couple plays from being 9-2 and potentially looking at a seed.

[tjbison]

No, no it's not really. Maybe when looked at in the context of who got in from some of the weaker conferences, but that happens every year. That's the nature of they way the playoffs and selection process is set up. One of ISUb's wins was a D2 this year. They lost convincingly to UNI, who got in ahead of them.

Historically the committee has awarded strong late season play though, they were definitely a bubble team though

[Professor Chaos]

Indiana State snub is a legit gripe.
Southland getting same # as MVFC is nuts (see also Tree screw job)
Odd number of seeds between Big Fluffy and CAA is odd.
For the Bison fans funneling the two most obvious matchup concerns in JMU and SDSU to the FargoDome seems unfair when the Bison are the #1 seed. It can all be explained rationally through the seeding process, but the optics don't look good.

I agree Indiana St was snubbed but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter much since they weren't going to do anything other than maybe win one game. I thought the seeds were pretty good. You could argue that JMU could've been seeded over Maine but I thought Colgate deserved a seed, I thought all 3 Big Sky teams that got them deserved a seed, and grudgingly I even thought Kennesaw deserved it (although they seem the most Jacksonville State-ish of any of this year's seeds).

If I'm the selection committee I don't give two shits about the optics of putting SDSU and JMU on NDSU's side of the bracket if that's the way it works out. Blame SDSU for a losing a game they shouldn't have at UNI or they'd be the 2 or 3 seed. Blame JMU for losing games they shouldn't have to Elon and UNH or they'd be the 2 or 3 seed. They're both easily justifiable in the spots they're at due to on-field performance (or lack thereof). The minute they try to start moving teams around based on optics is when things will really get politically messy inside that committee room. "Wait!" says Big Sky rep "if you're going to put SDSU on the bottom side of the bracket to get them away from NDSU than I want my top 2, EWU and Weber, separated as well". I keep hearing that the selection committee approach is too political already and you'd just be inviting more politics into the fray to consider optics when it comes to building the bracket.

[Bison 4 Life]

I agree Indiana St was snubbed but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter much since they weren't going to do anything other than maybe win one game. I thought the seeds were pretty good. You could argue that JMU could've been seeded over Maine but I thought Colgate deserved a seed, I thought all 3 Big Sky teams that got them deserved a seed, and grudgingly I even thought Kennesaw deserved it (although they seem the most Jacksonville State-ish of any of this year's seeds).

If I'm the selection committee I don't give two shits about the optics of putting SDSU and JMU on NDSU's side of the bracket if that's the way it works out. Blame SDSU for a losing a game they shouldn't have at UNI or they'd be the 2 or 3 seed. Blame JMU for losing games they shouldn't have to Elon and UNH or they'd be the 2 or 3 seed. They're both easily justifiable in the spots they're at due to on-field performance (or lack thereof). The minute they try to start moving teams around based on optics is when things will really get politically messy inside that committee room. "Wait!" says Big Sky rep "if you're going to put SDSU on the bottom side of the bracket to get them away from NDSU than I want my top 2, EWU and Weber, separated as well". I keep hearing that the selection committee approach is too political already and you'd just be inviting more politics into the fray to consider optics when it comes to building the bracket.

To be fair, there was room to do both.

[Stary2k11]

The thing is JMU wasn't even that good this year. Yeah, I get that they're dangerous if they can put it together but so are a bunch of teams. The highest you could've plausibly seeded them was 7th IMO. So having them unseeded isn't that big of travesty and, like I said, they podded them with the #8 seed which is something they didn't need to do but if they had seeded to #9 this bracket would look the exact same as it does now.

As far as the rest of teams on NDSU's side I really don't see what's so alarming about it. After JMU the best unseeded teams were probably Nicholls, Wofford, and Jacksonville St. Two of those are on the other side of the bracket (Wofford being the one that isn't). I really don't think Kennesaw is a strong #4 seed and that's the next highest seed on NDSU's side. I just don't see any massive difference from the top side to the bottom side of the bracket. I think the people criticizing the selection committee are just waaaaay overvaluing how good JMU was this year.

Too lazy to keep going back to find your original post, so quoting this one.

I ran some crude statistical analyses to test whether the two sides of the bracket differed in perceived strength. For simplicity I used Sagarin ratings. Again, these are quick and borderline unacceptable given the low sample size (12 scores per group).

Left side:

Mean: 57.70
Variance: 148.44
Sum of Squares: 1632.89
df: 11

Right side:

Mean: 53.80
Variance: 92.77
Sum of Squares: 1020.48
df: 11

With a 2-tailed hypothesis test the t statistic is 0.87, which leads to a p value of .39 at alpha = .05. The effect size is small to medium (Cohen's d = .36).

Removing NDSU from the calculations reduces the variance from our side of the bracket, but reduces the p value to .67.

In other words, even though the mean Sagarin ratings are numerically higher for our side of the bracket (w/ or w/o NDSU in the calculation), the sides do not differ statistically. Now, if we had these same means and a sample size of 40 teams per group, this would be a meaningful difference, so grain of salt.

[EC8CH]

Maybe when looked at in the context of who got in from some of the weaker conferences, but that happens every year. That's the nature of they way the playoffs and selection process is set up.

Well if you consider Incarnate Word's conference wins in the Southland equal to ISUb's conference wins in the MVFC I guess, but I think that's kinda crazy.

I wonder if the politics of the MVFC and the CAA each getting a team in with 6 wins led to the Southland getting one in as well as opposed to the MVFC getting two?

[Vet70]

To be fair, there was room to do both.

Who the hell said life was fair anyway?

Not aimed at anyone in particular, but with the exception of last year, BV bitching about how NDSU is treated by the Committee has almost become an annual event. All through the season, most have said the Bison are better than the rest of the FCS. Now is the time to really prove it.

[EC8CH]

BV bitching

Welcome to Bisonville.

[Bison 4 Life]

Who the hell said life was fair anyway?

Not aimed at anyone in particular, but with the exception of last year, BV bitching about how NDSU is treated by the Committee has almost become an annual event. All through the season, most have said the Bison are better than the rest of the FCS. Now is the time to really prove it.

Nope, never said it needed to be fair. It could make for a better tournament with tougher teams being spread out a bit more. More compelling games.

That said, I don't think JMU is the juggernaut they think they are and might actually get trucked by Colgate. (hope that doesn't go up on the bulletin board).

[17>1]

We see it every year, teams we think should be seeded higher or are a better team and put in the wrong spot, end up choking and losing a game they shouldn't. I sort of care about ISUb but not for the Valley aspect, but more for Grant and his fellow coaches. I know they worked their tails off this year and just came up short. Other than them, I don't give a rip about where anyone else is at. I say bring anyone on, I'm ready for some physical smash mouth football from a confident team that wants to come in and punch us in the mouth. Come in like GSU and stand at midfield during the intro. Come in like Richmond and crawl around on all fours like a bunch of spiders as the Bison are coming out. JMU came in to the FFD and knocked us out, props. I want those types of teams to come in. Sure makes beating them feel that much better. We're on a totally different level than the rest of the field.

Go Bison!