In the Gospel of St. Matthew, it says:
“Ask and it shall be given unto you…”
In no way was St. Matthew referring to rants on this website, but a stray question that I asked last week returned a detailed answer to me. In last week’s Football Friday, I said that I was not aware of how the Division III field for the football playoffs was populated; were there any “at large bids”?
Yesterday, I found in my inbox a communique from the “reader in Houston” who enlightened me so that I can now enlighten you. Here is a lightly edited version of his exposition:
“There will be 40 teams in the playoffs this year, compared to 32 last year.
“There are 28 conferences, therefore 28 automatic qualifiers, referred to as Pool A.
“There is a Pool B which is set aside for independents or conferences without automatic bids. This year there are no eligible teams for Pool B.
“Lastly, there is Pool C for the final 12 at-large teams. At-large bids are determined using a new NCAA Power Index aka NPI and the football committee must weigh each of the criteria in the formula, which takes into account the following:
- Winning Percentage (40%)/Strength of Schedule (60%)
- Home/Away W/L percentage – since its supposedly tougher to win on the road, it uses a 1.1/0.9 to reward those wins
- Quality wins, using a QW base multiplier, which is too complicated for me to understand/explain
- Minimum Wins of 5, which I do understand.
“There are four brackets of 10 teams apiece. The brackets are set by the committee, grouping eight teams together in a roughly geographic manner.
“The NCAA reserves the right to seed the bracket in the interest of avoiding having to pay for extra airplane flights in the first round. If two schools are within 500 miles’ driving distance, then the road team travels by bus. If the distance is longer than 500 miles then the NCAA must fly one team to play the other.
“The #7 seed plays #10, and #8 plays #9, with the winners advancing to the second round. However, the committee has the right to juggle first-round pairings to satisfy their travel requirements, as well as keep conference foes from facing each other in the first round.
“In general, the higher seed hosts through to the national semifinals. If two equal seeds from different brackets meet in the national semifinals, the NCAA will determine who hosts. That is figured out and announced when the brackets are originally released.
“Now you know the whole story.”
The reason I brought this up in the first place was that Linfield was playing Whitworth last weekend and both schools were undefeated in conference games; the winner would win the title and get the automatic bid. I did not know if the loser still had a chance for the playoffs.
Well, Linfield won the game – handily – giving them the automatic bid. And, it turns out, Whitworth got one of the at large bids for Pool C. Linfield gets a BYE for the first round of the tournament and will not play again until November 30th; Whitworth plays this weekend against Pomona-Pitzer. Go Wildcats!
Moving on … Today is International Men’s Day. Who knew? It is a day set aside so that awareness can be brought to the myriads of issues facing men around the world such as:
- Abuse – – the recipient not the donor
- Homelessness
- Parental separation – – often caused by “Baby Daddy” walking out
- Suicide
Now that I have listed those issues, I guess I am aware of them, and I guess that you are also aware of them having read the paragraph above. So, that means I have achieved the objective of International Men’s Day, so I’ll go sit in a rocking chair for the rest of the day and watch TV until it’s time to go fire up the grill and make some dinner.
Finally, if one were to take seriously the idea of a “Men’s Day”, perhaps one should consider this nugget from Albert Einstein:
“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………
A minimum of five wins? Perhaps the Las Vegas Raiders could be kicked out of the NFL and invited into Division III. That way, the woeful franchise–maybe, just maybe–would make the playoffs this year.
TenaciousP:
Your Raiders have 7 games left. They should be favored in 2 of them; they should be serious underdogs in 2 of them; they should be short-priced underdogs in 3 of them. Five wins for 2024 is in their grasp; a .500 record in 2024 seems out of the question.