As the final game of 774 regular season FBS contests gets underway, we'll follow today's Army/Navy game as well as the lower division playoff games...
Last night, New Hampshire managed to oust Chattanooga 35-30 despite being outgained by two hundred yards and outplayed for the first 2 1/2 quarters - but that's what a number one team does. Today, defenders North Dakota St overcame Coastal Carolina 39-32, in a surprisingly competitive game, and currently Sam Houston St and Villanova are waging a back and forth war - SHSU kicks a field goal, Villanova scores a TD, and now the Bearcats take the lead BACK with a TD drive of their own to lead, 34-31. UPDATE: The Wildcats were forced into trying and missing a tying 51 yard field goal; the Bearkats held on to win, 34-31.
Meanwhile, Army leads Navy 7-0, after a jailbreak blocked punt converted for a touchdown, with the Black Knights controlling the line of scrimmage on both offense and defense...until a fourth down conversion of theirs is negated by a LATE time out from the sideline, followed by a Navy stop and turnover, closely followed by a TD pass to tie the game at seven. Controversial time out changes the whole game!
UPDATE: As expected, the two Division III powerhouses are cruising to what we believe is their NINTH consecutive championship meeting! Mount Union routed previously 12-0 Wellesley 70-0 after three quarters, before the fourth string allowed three garbage time TDs. Currently, Wisconsin-Whitewater leads 14-0 early in the second quarter against 11-1 west coast power Linfield.
UPDATE: Linfield has come back to tie UW Whitewater at 14 going into the fourth quarter, and after the Naval Academy pushed out to a dominating 17-7 lead, Army's Daniel Grochkowski skimmed through a field goal from 52 to close within a TD with 1:51 to go!
UPDATE: Illinois St leads Eastern Washington 31-20, and in twelve possessions the two teams have scored on NINE of them, with EWU's initial punt, their subsequent fumble, and ISU's kneel to end the first half being the only non-scoring drives of the game so far as of the mid third quarter.
Meanwhile, Navy beat Army 17-10 for their 13th consecutive win. CBS's Allie LaForge interviewed Navy coach Ken Niumatololo after the game, and asked the coach about the key time out he called in the second quarter. Coach said, "If you asked me who told me to call that time out, you wouldn't believe me." She asked anyway, and his answer was, "The Man Upstairs." GOOD for YOU, Coach!
UPDATE: Illinois St can't be stopped! In their ten possessions AT Eastern Washington, on the freaky red field, they've gone as follows so far: FG, TD, TD, TD, TD, end of half, TD, TD,TD, TD... (To be continued.) They lead 52-27 early in the fourth. ...and at game's end, they won by the score of 59-46. In all, there were 24 possessions: 17 ended in scores (14 TDs and 3FGs), 3 EWU turnovers (fumble & 2 interceptions), two end of half kneel downs by ISU, a failed 4th down late by the winners they didn't need, and one lonely punt, just two minutes into the game. Division III update: UW-Whitewater went on to win, 20-14, over Linfield, so we get rematch number nine or so for the D3 title next weekend in Salem, VA: Mount Union v. UW-Whitewater. In D2, Minnesota St is waiting for the winner of tonight's Colorado St-Pueblo/West Georgia game to set up next Saturday's Division II title tilt.
(SO, as far as our prognostication battle goes with the professionals, Illinois St kept us from winning all four games up to this point: in fact, we hit Sam Houston by 3 and North Dakota St by 7 on the nose, and Arizona by 6 was extremely close to perfect. And...well, we really had irrational faith in the Big Sky, I guess. Three turnovers to none will do it, though. Anyway, it's 3-1 Following Football, with three NFL games left to decide the weekly winner...and we just need to be right once to win the weekend!)
Showing posts with label Division 2/3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Division 2/3. Show all posts
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Saturday, December 6, 2014
So, how many teams SHOULD be in the playoffs?
It's a question the administrators of every sports league must consider: what's the "best" number of teams to put in the knockout round for our league championship?
For the NBA and the NHL, as well as the college basketball world, the strategy has long been to put in a ton of teams, as many as can be comfortably included, in search of the best TOURNAMENT they can create. Because the two pro leagues play series at each round, it prevents the longshots from advancing unless they're really hot for a LONG time. (For the 68-team NCAA basketball tourney, the "best" team RARELY wins. But the winner usually comes from the top ten or fifteen, at least.)
For Major League Baseball and the NFL, a much lower percentage of the league is invited into the post-season. (For about a decade, by comparison, 16 of the NHL's 21 teams were in the playoffs, so teams winning 30-40% of their games regularly made the playoffs, and the 82-game season was effectively meaningless.) The NFL includes 12 out of its 32 teams; MLB, 10 out of 30. That means that with very rare exceptions (we're looking at YOU, NFC South!), the teams that make the post-season "deserves" to be there in the sense that they have winning records, and that they've shown that there's at least a chance that they could win the whole thing. (In contrast, no #16 team in the men's NCAAs has ever won even a single game in the tournament! Talk about undeserving! And they want to expand the playoffs? Please....) In both pro football and baseball, the last-seeded team has won the whole thing, and recently, too. (See: Steelers, Pittsburgh; Giants, San Francisco.) Most observers think this percentage is about right, if a lack of call for 'playoff reform' is an indicator. (FCS football, as well as Divisions 2 and 3, have similar arrangements.)
FBS football, however, has always been contrary.
Remember, less than twenty-five years ago, there WAS no true "post-season" in major college football. They relied on polls of newspapermen and coaches to name their champion, resulting in split championships, violent disagreements, and yearly controversy. The junkies of the game would say that those arguments were precisely what made the game so exciting. But reason began to make inroads in 1992, after two straight split national championships, and the "Bowl Coalition" and then the "Bowl Alliance" made some half-hearted attempts to match the top two teams in a bowl game. With the realization that...well, that there was more money to be made by joining rather than fighting, the Rose Bowl joined in 1998 to create the Bowl Championship Series (running out of names!), which used various, ever changing criteria to choose "the two best teams" to meet in a championship game. Now, it was (sort of) decided on the field.
Yeah, but...
Now, of course, we have a four team tournament, still with no more definitive criteria than "the four best teams" as selected by a room full of experts, to decide the national title. Purists will tell you that the small number of entrants makes every game of the season, and guarantees that they will have a deserving champion. Others, of equally honorable motives, say it should be eight or even sixteen teams in said playoff. (Still others of a different bent notice the potential money to be made from more playoff games...) And, of course, there are a few old-timers who want to turn the clock back and count votes. Who's right?
Who knows? Depends on your taste. Do you want the playoffs to reward the SEASON'S best team? Or the best at the END of the season? Or are you more interested in having an EXCITING post-season? It's hard to argue that there's a problem going to eight or sixteen when the FCS (with the same kind of college kids and about the same number of teams involved) invites TWENTY-FOUR teams into the postseason successfully. By percentage, since the basketball folks take about one-fifth of their clientele (68 of 320-something), 24 out of 128 would be about right. (But old-timers would have conniption fits!)
In the end, it's whatever you prefer. It's what the PURPOSE of the postseason is for you. We have our own preferences, but frankly, it's not that terrible to have a variety as you move from sport to sport! And it could be WORSE, purists! Wasn't it Indiana who used to allow EVERY basketball team into the state high school playoffs, all in one big bracket? How about one big ten-round football tournament with all 759 four-year college teams involved, from FBS through NAIA? Or even an eight-round event with just the 252 division 1 teams (and we can add the top three D2 teams and the D3 champion to round up to a perfect 256!)!
Pick your poison.
For the NBA and the NHL, as well as the college basketball world, the strategy has long been to put in a ton of teams, as many as can be comfortably included, in search of the best TOURNAMENT they can create. Because the two pro leagues play series at each round, it prevents the longshots from advancing unless they're really hot for a LONG time. (For the 68-team NCAA basketball tourney, the "best" team RARELY wins. But the winner usually comes from the top ten or fifteen, at least.)
For Major League Baseball and the NFL, a much lower percentage of the league is invited into the post-season. (For about a decade, by comparison, 16 of the NHL's 21 teams were in the playoffs, so teams winning 30-40% of their games regularly made the playoffs, and the 82-game season was effectively meaningless.) The NFL includes 12 out of its 32 teams; MLB, 10 out of 30. That means that with very rare exceptions (we're looking at YOU, NFC South!), the teams that make the post-season "deserves" to be there in the sense that they have winning records, and that they've shown that there's at least a chance that they could win the whole thing. (In contrast, no #16 team in the men's NCAAs has ever won even a single game in the tournament! Talk about undeserving! And they want to expand the playoffs? Please....) In both pro football and baseball, the last-seeded team has won the whole thing, and recently, too. (See: Steelers, Pittsburgh; Giants, San Francisco.) Most observers think this percentage is about right, if a lack of call for 'playoff reform' is an indicator. (FCS football, as well as Divisions 2 and 3, have similar arrangements.)
FBS football, however, has always been contrary.
Remember, less than twenty-five years ago, there WAS no true "post-season" in major college football. They relied on polls of newspapermen and coaches to name their champion, resulting in split championships, violent disagreements, and yearly controversy. The junkies of the game would say that those arguments were precisely what made the game so exciting. But reason began to make inroads in 1992, after two straight split national championships, and the "Bowl Coalition" and then the "Bowl Alliance" made some half-hearted attempts to match the top two teams in a bowl game. With the realization that...well, that there was more money to be made by joining rather than fighting, the Rose Bowl joined in 1998 to create the Bowl Championship Series (running out of names!), which used various, ever changing criteria to choose "the two best teams" to meet in a championship game. Now, it was (sort of) decided on the field.
Yeah, but...
Now, of course, we have a four team tournament, still with no more definitive criteria than "the four best teams" as selected by a room full of experts, to decide the national title. Purists will tell you that the small number of entrants makes every game of the season, and guarantees that they will have a deserving champion. Others, of equally honorable motives, say it should be eight or even sixteen teams in said playoff. (Still others of a different bent notice the potential money to be made from more playoff games...) And, of course, there are a few old-timers who want to turn the clock back and count votes. Who's right?
Who knows? Depends on your taste. Do you want the playoffs to reward the SEASON'S best team? Or the best at the END of the season? Or are you more interested in having an EXCITING post-season? It's hard to argue that there's a problem going to eight or sixteen when the FCS (with the same kind of college kids and about the same number of teams involved) invites TWENTY-FOUR teams into the postseason successfully. By percentage, since the basketball folks take about one-fifth of their clientele (68 of 320-something), 24 out of 128 would be about right. (But old-timers would have conniption fits!)
In the end, it's whatever you prefer. It's what the PURPOSE of the postseason is for you. We have our own preferences, but frankly, it's not that terrible to have a variety as you move from sport to sport! And it could be WORSE, purists! Wasn't it Indiana who used to allow EVERY basketball team into the state high school playoffs, all in one big bracket? How about one big ten-round football tournament with all 759 four-year college teams involved, from FBS through NAIA? Or even an eight-round event with just the 252 division 1 teams (and we can add the top three D2 teams and the D3 champion to round up to a perfect 256!)!
Pick your poison.
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