https://herosports.com/fcs-playoffs-seed-16-bzbz/
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xsmileyclapx
Very nice - should pretty much put an end to bids making a difference in terms of who is hosting. Of course it will also give more opportunities to whine about the selection committee. It'll be interesting to see how the AGS Poll does versus the STATS and Coaches polls in terms of mirroring the playoff seeds with the seeding expanding to 16.
Good, bidding for games was dumb. Just rank them 1-24 and be done with regionalization and all that nonsense.
It’s a step up and an improvement.
The cynical side of me wonders if it will really make that much difference.
With how subjective a lot of the seeding for teams in the 9-16 range would be, what's stopping the committee from just seeding the teams that would have bid higher/have bigger gates over other teams unless it's extremely obvious?
For example: Montana in 2022 was a very contentious choice not just to host a game, but get in the playoffs at all, but they were ranked #17 and #18 in the coaches and stats polls, respectively, after the last week of the year. So why wouldn't the committee have just put them as the #16 seed? Sure, they'll take flack for it, but they took flack, anyways.
Good. Spread the wealth.
Because the committee isn't the NCAA and has no direct incentive to maximize profits in the playoffs. I can pull out plenty of examples of where they didn't seed teams to make the most money. In the 2022 playoffs UIW was a team many people said didn't deserve to be seeded despite being 10-1 due to a horrendous SOS and the fact that they didn't even win the SLC auto - they averaged less than 2k in attendance at their home games yet the committee seeded them at #7 over teams like Weber St and Furman who were just on the edge of the seed line and would've drawn much better. Or last year NDSU was the presumptive first team out of the seeds and would've significantly outdrawn Furman (the #7 seed) or Villanova (the #8 seed) yet the committee seeded it the way they did.
I mean sure, but I'm not talking about 7 vs 8. I feel like there's normally a pretty legit case for whatever team gets seeded in the top 8, with notable exceptions.
I'm talking about the bottom seeds. Like on any given year, you could very easily just mix the order of 12-16 with half of the unseeded teams, and it's fine.
I agree that these things shouldn't happen, but I am not fully convinced they won't.
I'd disagree that the seed bubble is any different from the at-large bubble in terms of how many hairs they have to split to differentiate teams. There's probably less belly-aching from teams just on the wrong side of the seed bubble than teams on the wrong side of the at-large bubble because if you just miss the seeds you're still in the dance. I don't think it'll be much different at all to compare the 15/16 seeds with the top unseeded teams in the new format versus comparing the 7/8 seeds with the top unseeded teams in the old format. And there will still be much more wailing and gnashing of teeth from teams left on the wrong side of the at-large bubble.