Nobody will admit it, but NAME RECOGNITION. PSU was the #1 team in the conference (regardless of conference standings) and their losses were to a 7-4 team and a 6-5 team. They had wins over PAC 12 North #2 Washington State and a record-setting absolute drubbing of FBS North Texas. They also had wins over Montana State, Cal Poly, Montana, SUU, and EWU. Probably about as tough a schedule as you could get in the BSC this year. Give ndsu that exact resume (in fact, ndsu lost to a 7-4 BSC team and a 5-6 MVFC team and had 0 FBS wins) and they're still the #3 seed. PSU is #6. Having them (who everybody, right or wrong, still assumes to be an illusion) and paper tiger SUU as the leaders of our conference, nobody respected the BSC (even though we're still better than every other conference not named MVFC).