My Attempt at Fixing D3 Football Selection Process

[HOPEful]

In all fairness to HSU, the number of non-ASC schools within a 600-mile radius of Abilene is three (3):

--Trinity had 3 non-conference games. McMurry was canceled due to COVID. They hosted Macalester, and beat nearby rival Texas Lutheran, just 30 miles up the road

--Hendrix in Conway Arkansas, 522 miles away, played UW-River Falls, another travel orphan that needs 3 non-conference games, ASC's Howard Payne at a neutral site north of Dallas, and Sewanee in a non-conference game.

--Millsaps in Jackson MS, 586 miles away, played crosstown rival Belhaven, NAIA Southwestern Assemblies (just south of Dallas) and Olivet.

It is quite expensive to fly 58 athletes somewhere for a game. I also have Title IX questions about comparable travel budgets in women's sports.

What advantage is there for a school to schedule a perennial Top 25 and get beaten by 30 points? Linfield playing and defeating HSU would offer Linfield a chance to host 3 or 4 rounds into the playoffs and vice versa.

We are on an island...

I get it. I do.

My point wasn't meant to be taken as that there are simple scheduling solutions available or that the money was even available. But that very reason that the money may not be there for such endeavors is exactly why the D3 will never adopt a first round, pay to play playoff structure.

[Baldini]

I think most understand it's an island and it's a stacked deck against them, yet others travel and make it work under Title IX.

In Week 1 alone, so programs are making it work. 

MHBU @ Simpson
Redlands @ George Fox
East Texas Baptist @ UW-Platteville
Carnegie Mellon @ Whitworth
Chapman @ Pacific
UW-Oshkosh @ Huntingdon
Southwestern @ Cal Lutheran


 

[Ralph Turner]

+1 Baldini & HOPEful.

Sul Ross & Austin College only scheduled 9 games.

[Etchglow]

+1 Baldini & HOPEful.

Sul Ross & Austin College only scheduled 9 games.

Didn't Sul Ross have an exhibition against that Houston team for homecoming? Just wasn't an ncaa affiliated team.

[HOPEful]

Interestingly enough, I heard an interview on the radio yesterday with Matt Mitchell, the head coach of D2 Grand Valley State University's football team. GVSU, and the GLIAC as a whole, are in similar situation scheduling wise. He said for next season, just to fill his regular season schedule, the team will be taking a charter flight twice to away games. This season, they hosted D3 UW La Crosse and Colorado State-Pueblo. He did not hold back his feelings on playing down and scheduling D3 opponents, even one's as good at UW Lacrosse...

"We played Wisconsin-Lacrosse and that did nothing for us. When I'm on the Division II national football committee, one of eight members that selects the postseason field, that game was not even counted. In regards to our record, it's like it didn't even occur. So for us to play one of those contests, it gives us nothing to bolster our resume for postseason play, and you run the risk of injury."

[HOPEful]

How about an SAA v ASC Superpower Saturday at a neutral site. Mary Hardin Baylor v. Birmingham Southern and Hardin Simmons v. Trinity?

[jknezek]

I'm going to go the other way, somewhat tongue in cheek because I certainly recognize the NCC 2019 issue, but also because I think this is a more legitimate solution than trying to determine which Conferences are Pool A worthy and which are not.

The problem right now is not that we have too many AQs, it's that we have 5 too few. If we had 32 AQs, everyone would know win or get in. The argument is always over how Pool C teams are better than some Pool A teams... and that is certainly true. But the argument only happens because WE GET to argue over Pool C teams. Do away with Pool C, and the argument goes away. There is no more "last team on the table," or the "most deserving second chance", or the school unwilling to pay for higher SOS road trips. There are no second chances, deal with it, move on. Instead of trying to scheme how to get more Pool C teams in, which is what we see the Regional Committees playing with these days, they would just seed the winners and move on.

Pool C creates a huge number of problems, not solutions. So don't expand the back room and cigar portion of the tournament, expand the black and white portion. There is no way to determine the best 32 teams in DIII football. Too little competition, too little crossover, too expensive to travel, too much guesswork. So don't. Don't bother. Let's get 32 AQs and stop the farce of trying to determine based on nebulous ideas, who is the 4th best non conference winner or the fifth or the sixth when there is, essentially, no useful data to split those hairs.

So, how do we get to 5 more Pool A bids? I think the Division will fix it by itself over the next few years, but the easy, black and white solution in the meantime is to say, pre-season, that the conferences with a quarterfinalist get a second bid. The final bid can go to the conference that lost to the prior year champion in the quarters. Add a stipulation the Conference runner up must have at least 8 D3 qualifying wins or you move to the team that lost the National Championship Game in the quarters.

And there you go. No more arguments. Everyone knows how to get in to the tournament before the season starts. Schedule at least 9 D3 qualifying games, win your conference, or finish second in a conference with a team that went very deep the year before.

Think about any professional sport... it is always clear, before the season starts, how to make the post-season. There is no voting on NFL Wildcards or MLB Wildcards, or the 8th seed in the NBA Post-Season. Unbalanced schedule? Too bad. The conference champion in the NFC East gets the same bye as the one in the NFC West, and no one cares that the East has been terrible and the West hasn't been deeper except for talking heads who need to fill airtime.

The NCAA would be better served by removing the ambiguity and the voting and ranking and jockeying. Fill the Tournament with pre-determined slots and lets move on.

[Cowboy2]

I agree with a lot of the arguments posted in this thread. With all the talk on who got in and what not, I think the regional rankings hurt Hardin Simmons more than the playoff structure. There were a lot of good teams this year across D3! Maybe it's because of the extra year some players got from Covid, but whatever the reason was, there were a lot of good teams that didn't make it in as well... Ithaca and Union for example didn't make it but also had multiple losses. HSU didn't help themselves by not having that extra game count, but then Again the budget and location is hard for teams in Texas with such a large state and travel. Looking back, * I don't want to get into any bias, but if HSU was the 4th team in they would have maybe had a chance but never got discussed.

I think if bethal didn't have that 1 pt last second loss to STJ, HSU could have been put in. But 4 teams from one region is a hard sell for a region that doesn't get a lot of pull to begin with. Imagine if they did t switch the ASC to region three!!! Now that will get everyone's eyes to open if HSU was still in R6.

[Ralph Turner]

+1 jk

[MRMIKESMITH]

I have mixed emotions about this but wanting to lessen automatic bids does not have to mean not wanting every team to have an opportunities. Right now every team doesn't have the same opportunities either as some conferences are much harder than others. We can be honest and say that about half of the conference champions are almost never going to win a playoff game and that if they were replaced by Pool C team #6, that team would have a much better chance.

With that said if we attempted to dream up the best playoff selection process, we would be right back here arguing that certain teams got left out. There is no perfect solution but the argument that those that dislike the auto bid process don't want equal access is usually not true.

It's not about winning playoff games - it's providing championship access to all Division 3 schools.

No team is invincible. Yes, some conferences are harder than others, but that's the way it is everywhere in any sport that has a post-season championship. Football is stuck at 32 teams, and can't expand.

Someone who wins their league deserves to go to the post season tournament - not some 'bowl' game or consolation prize.

In other sports they have carved out post-season tournaments for some conferences (which I used to hate but now they just tepidly bother me) but they can only do so in football if they split into divisions and have a championship game.

Any talk about altering or excluding conference champs IS denying access, IMHO.

My first thought about this is, if it is not about winning playoff games, what is the point of playoff games?

In the end clearly there are some people that very much believe in the automatic bid process and there are those that don't. I was attempting to point out that those that don't, aren't against equal opportunities, they just feel we could achieve that in other ways.

I had some thought into this and with the vast number of teams in DIII and huge disparity. I'd suggest and this has been mentioned that if we were moving to allowing 6 team conference to qualify for automatic bid, that we reduce the # of season games from 10 to 9. Have Wk 11 be utilized as the 1st round of the playoffs (maybe 48/56 with top 8 or 16 teams having bye) and bye-week for everyone else and then Wk 12 be utilized as custom for bowl games or 10th games for conferences that do not participate in bowl games.

Going back to my point that was somewhat pushed as "Never" going to happen is actually more probable today after listening to ATN podcast this morning https://www.d3blogs.com/d3football/2022/01/19/atn-podcast-301-vote-coming-on-smaller-conferences-pads-in-practice/. It appears that people that know nothing or lack information of football within the DIII landscape are pushing of "Equitability" agenda when moving from 7AQ teams to 6AQ teams. Football can and should be an exception. Football needs to be at 8. We also, which was noted in the podcast need to revisit the 32 team cap, which can change with the extra week I proposed. If we go to 6 teams or 8, we can move the playoff to 48 teams or 38 (230/38 = 6). If we move to 6, shorten the season by 1 week. We will see at least 5 new football only conference created, thus keeping the at-large to 4 to 6 teams. Will moving to 6 teams help with the OOC scheduling, not sure, I believe teams will play the same teams anyway. However, with an extra week of games for playoffs and teams have an "Equitable" entrance to the championship (even though they already have for football). Will this help the island schools? No, NWC will still play SCAIC. We would just end up with more Texas schools playing other Texas/SE schools in both 1st and 2nd round.

Going back to reducing the season by 1 game and adding another week of playoff, it has been said that it is in fact a possibility and with the reduction of AQ, I'd think it would be a reasonable compromise. I'd be in favor of adding 8 more games (16 teams) 2 "Play-In" per regions in the bracket. You can have majority of your At-Large teams play AQ teams from "Weaker" conferences the  1st round of the playoff, thus creating more enticing matchups the 2nd round. Thoughts (Please listen to ATN posted above)?

[Mr. Ypsi]

I have a different suggestion for extending the season (thus allowing an extra round in the layoffs: let's change the calendar!

I propose we chop a week off of January (VERY few would be opposed to that!), and move it to September or October!

This proposal is (mostly tongue-in-cheek, but, hey!, why not?!

[FCGrizzliesGrad]

I have a different suggestion for extending the season (thus allowing an extra round in the layoffs: let's change the calendar!

I propose we chop a week off of January (VERY few would be opposed to that!), and move it to September or October!

This proposal is (mostly tongue-in-cheek, but, hey!, why not?!

I have a calendar change just in general that I'd love to see. 13 months with 28 days in each month. Every date is the same day of the week. All 1st on a Sunday, all 2nd on a Monday, etc. That's 364 days. After the end of the 13th month (or before the 1st month), there would be one day (2 in a leap year) that are just special New Years holidays that don't fall into the day of the week format. Thus every day would fall on the same day of the week every year as well.

[jknezek]

I have a different suggestion for extending the season (thus allowing an extra round in the layoffs: let's change the calendar!

I propose we chop a week off of January (VERY few would be opposed to that!), and move it to September or October!

This proposal is (mostly tongue-in-cheek, but, hey!, why not?!

I have a calendar change just in general that I'd love to see. 13 months with 28 days in each month. Every date is the same day of the week. All 1st on a Sunday, all 2nd on a Monday, etc. That's 364 days. After the end of the 13th month (or before the 1st month), there would be one day (2 in a leap year) that are just special New Years holidays that don't fall into the day of the week format. Thus every day would fall on the same day of the week every year as well.

I love this just for the chaos it would cause in the short term to create something so much better in the long term. Kind of like switching to the metric system... which we somehow failed at. Or watching old videos and pictures of Sweden changing the side of the road they drove on in the 1960s. Just because we've done it one way for a few hundred years doesn't make it the best way, but I grew up Jewish, so ancient, difficult calendars are kind of par for the course for me.

[Pat Coleman]

That would provide a bunch of programmers a lot of work.

[Ralph Turner]

I have a different suggestion for extending the season (thus allowing an extra round in the layoffs: let's change the calendar!

I propose we chop a week off of January (VERY few would be opposed to that!), and move it to September or October!

This proposal is (mostly tongue-in-cheek, but, hey!, why not?!

I have a calendar change just in general that I'd love to see. 13 months with 28 days in each month. Every date is the same day of the week. All 1st on a Sunday, all 2nd on a Monday, etc. That's 364 days. After the end of the 13th month (or before the 1st month), there would be one day (2 in a leap year) that are just special New Years holidays that don't fall into the day of the week format. Thus every day would fall on the same day of the week every year as well.

I love this just for the chaos it would cause in the short term to create something so much better in the long term. Kind of like switching to the metric system... which we somehow failed at. Or watching old videos and pictures of Sweden changing the side of the road they drove on in the 1960s. Just because we've done it one way for a few hundred years doesn't make it the best way, but I grew up Jewish, so ancient, difficult calendars are kind of par for the course for me.

Yeah, we would get an extra month 7 years out of every 19.