CSJ Sagarin NCAA FCS Playoff Projection-Oct. 24
I am starting something new this week at CSJ with the NCAA Division I playoff projections using just the CSJ Sagarin rankings to seed the 24 team field. This field is as of today and using the fact that 10 FCS conferences get automatic bids to the field the bracket. The list below showing its conference listed is the project Sagarin conference champion. Then the 14 next highest ranked teams are the at-large teams.
As the season goes on, I will use the six Division I win criteria into account. If there is a team before then cannot possibly get to this total at , I will take them out of the projection. I will do a projection each week up until the actual playoff field is announced on Nov. 19th.
This week there were no adjustments but should there be two conference teams paired together, I will take the the playoff committee suggestion where two teams from the same conference cannot meet in the opening round. But one item that I am doing that takes back to the roots of the Division I FCS playoff field is to seed the full group from #1 to #24 and not look at geography to select the field.
I will repeat that this is as the field sits if the rankings were used to select the field today. As this first project shows, there are eight schools from the Missouri Valley Football Conference. This will likely go down as teams from that league knock each other off and when the six Division I criteria is taken into account.
| Overall Seed | School | Playoff Bid | Seed/Placement |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Dakota State | Missouri Valley | #1 Seed |
| 2 | James Madison | Colonial | #2 Seed |
| 3 | Youngstown State | At-Large 1 | #3 Seed |
| 4 | South Dakota | At-Large 2 | #4 Seed |
| 5 | Western Illinois | At-Large 3 | #5 Seed |
| 6 | South Dakota State | At-Large 4 | #6 Seed |
| 7 | Northern Iowa | At-Large 5 | #7 Seed |
| 8 | Jacksonville State | Ohio Valley | #8 Seed |
| 9 | Northern Arizona | Big Sky | Home 1st Round |
| 10 | Southern Illinois | At-Large 6 | Home 1st Round |
| 11 | Central Arkansas | Southland | Home 1st Round |
| 12 | Weber State | At-Large 7 | Home 1st Round |
| 13 | Illinois State | At-Large 8 | Home 1st Round |
| 14 | Villanova | At-Large 9 | Home 1st Round |
| 15 | Samford | SoCon | Home 1st Round |
| 16 | Sam Houston State | At-Large 10 | Home 1st Round |
| 17 | Wofford | At-Large 11 | Road 1st Round |
| 18 | Delaware | At-Large 12 | Road 1st Round |
| 19 | Furman | At-Large 13 | Road 1st Round |
| 20 | Southern Utah | At-Large 14 | Road 1st Round |
| 21 | Kennesaw State | Big South | Road 1st Round |
| 22 | Duquesne | NEC | Road 1st Round |
| 23 | Colgate | Patriot | Road 1st Round |
| 24 | San Diego | Pioneer | Road 1st Round |
And here are these projections in bracket form.
Originally from LaMoure, North Dakota, Kent is a 1996 graduate of North Dakota State University. His prior writing experience is over 15 years having previously worked with D2football.com, I-AA.org, and College Sporting News before coming to College Sports Journal in 2016. His main focus is college football is the Missouri Valley Football Conference within the Division I FCS. And in 2017, he began also to look at the FBS Group of Five conferences of the American Athletic, Conference USA, Mid-American, Mountain West, and Sun Belt.
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