Dustin

Or, are the matchups pre-determined, and then they play at the school who bid higher between the two?

Question for you: Are the 8 home teams for the first round determined by the 8 highest bids, and then low/no bid teams are paired up with them, with geography as a potential factor?

According to both FCS playoff projections available (nobowls, Stats), there are 4 Big Sky teams in the field if the season ended today, same as MVFC, with Southern Utah as a bubble. So the Big Sky can't be that bad. CAA has the most at 5.

Thanks. According to Sagarin, Northern Iowa is the 4th highest ranked FCS team.

what about EWU? Can you post the link to where you're getting this information?

It appears that as long as we make the playoffs, a date with NDSU is in our future.

Highlights are one of video selections on undsports.com

For sure. Essentially, there's a home playoff game this weekend, so we better act like it. (Team AND Fans)

I still think we'd get SDSU or UNI before Montana. Fits with the NCAA models of non-conference match ups, and 400-mile travel preference.

When you look at statistics, UND doesn't seem like an exceptional team. Maybe we're not.

Football, like hockey, avoids conference match ups on the first round. So we don't have to worry about competing against Montana for bids.

I was just going by the size of their venue. I didn't realuze that that doesn't necessarily translate to bidding power. Glad UND has that going for them.

Without individually counting every seat, there appears to be over 3,000 seats available right now, according to the venue map on Ticketmaster. So that would put attendance at 8-9k. Since there is no Friday night hockey game, the people in town for hockey may not come until the hockey game starts, although, the fact that it is homecoming may help. I hope we can crack 5 figures.

Wow, I wonder why the fans didn't turn up. Anyway, good to know.

At this point, I don't think SDSU could lose a playoff spot with all the profit being made from playing a MVFC schedule, unless they really tank. Like you say, a loss to NDSU won't really hurt them that badly. I also think that UND getting a top 8 seed is also extremely unlikely, given there's no profit on their Big Sky schedule. So, if UND and SDSU are both at-large selections, those two schools would probably be matched up against each other, and it will probably be in Brookings, based on their ability to bid high. I would say root for SDSU to get one of the 8 seeds, and root for UNI to get knocked out of the playoffs all together. I think both of these things happening are achievable goals.

I better throw in there that UNI probably can't make the playoffs either if UND wants to host, unless number 1 happens, then it won't matter.

http://www.fcs.football/fcsfront.asp #22

So the best case for being able to host a playoff game is either: 1) UND makes it to the top 8 and get seeded; 2) SDSU makes it to the top 8 and gets seeded; or 3) SDSU sputters and doesn't make the playoffs. My guess is number 2 is the most likely, if they can beat their conference opponents.

My oh my, that would be euphoria for many people!

I guess the only thing we're disagreeing about is how beneficial it is to have two bye weeks before hosting a playoff game. That said, a point I hadn't thought of was that the bidding may be against a team like SDSU that has a bigger facility and could outbid us. In that case, two bye weeks and hosting a playoff game is better than one bye week and going on the road.

In all likelihood, you'd need to be a top-4 seed to host two home playoff games, unless there were an upset. I highly doubt that could happen this year, so it'd still be play one at home, and then go on the road.

I'm pretty sure we would be able to bid our way to a first round home playoff game.

Contemplating whether a top 8 seed is even something we would want this year. Top 8 seeds get a bye the first weekend of the playoff. Since our scheduled bye is the last week of the regular season, would be want two weeks off before playing a playoff football game? I would think we'd like to use our bye week to get ready for the first playoff game, get rested, get healthy, and then put a on a good performance in playoff game number 1 to get back in the swing of things, and then be all primed for a what would surely would be a tough playoff game number 2, which could possibly be against the Bison.

Even at 8-3, UND is guaranteed a better record than Illinois St. (currently #23 at 2-4), and no worse than tied with Northern Iowa (currently #11 at 2-3), so I would tend to agree that we shouldn't have to worry about being 8-3. 9-2 is better though!

Found it now. Couldn't see the link at first.