Welcome one and all to the game we annually call our playoff projections. It’s the wacky, madcap event where we take 21 automatic bids, most of which are not yet set, then figure out at-large bids, some of which will lose between now and Selection Sunday, then seed them and pair them up logically … or fiscally … or geographically … or randomly, depending on the bracket.

In doing this every year, we have to toe a fine line. We can call some conference races, leave some open, pretend we know what’s going to happen, or ignore what has yet to be played. This is an inexact science, but it’s an attempt to look at the entire field using the NCAA’s stated selection/seeding criteria. But you can’t simply try to project one bracket in isolation. How do you know if there are eight South teams getting into the field, and not seven or nine or 10?
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I see plenty of angst around the message boards and in my e-mail about the regional rankings the NCAA published today (a day late, by the way — if the NCAA is going to fine schools for reporting scores late then perhaps the NCAA should pay $50 to every ranked school to which it reported a day late).

Remember one thing — regional rankings are not like the national rankings. They do not consider all games. Any win is better than any loss.

We have a lot of info about the playoffs and how teams are ranked by the NCAA in our FAQ. But let’s run through them quickly and take a look at what the salient numbers are.

Almost always these run heavily on regional winning percentage and QOW, the Quality of Wins index. We calculate this for you each week. You can find a link to it on the menu rail of any news page.

I’ve listed regional record, regional winning percentage, and QOW.

East Region
1. Rowan 4-0, 1.000, 12.000
2. Hobart 5-0, 1.000, 11.600
3. Delaware Valley 7-0, 1.000, 10.857
4. Union 5-0, 1.000, 10.800
5. Alfred 5-0, 1.000, 10.600
6. Ithaca 6-1, .857, 10.286
7. RPI 5-1, .833, 10.000
8. St. John Fisher 7-1, .875, 9.875
9. Cortland State 5-2, .714, 9.143
10. Wilkes 5-2, 8.857

Every unbeaten team is by default better than every team with a loss. The rankings are just basically a rehash of the QOW, with the exception of Fitchburg State (6-1, .857, 11.000), the only nod to actual team strength. Also left out, Buffalo State, which has a QOW of 10.500 but only a 2-4 overall record, 1-1 in region.

North Region
1. North Central 5-0, 1.000, 13.500
2. Wabash 6-0, 1.000, 11.333
3. Ohio Northern 5-1, .833, 10.571
4. Mount Union 5-1, .833, 11.500
5. Augustana 5-1, .833, 10.333
6. John Carroll 6-1, .857, 9.857
7. Mount St. Joseph 6-1 , .857, 9.571
8. Carthage 5-2, .714, 10.286
9. Otterbein 5-2, .714, 10.000
10. Capital 5-2 , .714, 9.143

Ohio Northern is out of order in terms of QOW but has the head-to-head win against Mount Union. Similarly John Carroll is somewhat out of order but has a win against Ohio Northern. Left out? Alma, 4-1, .800, 10.400 But there won’t be five OAC teams in this ranking forever.

South Region
1. Trinity (Texas) 5-0, 1.000, 12.400
2. Ferrum 7-0, 1.000, 10.333
3. Mary Hardin-Baylor 4-1, .800, 10.000
4. Thiel 7-0, 1.000, 11.429
5. Bridgewater (Va.) 4-1, .800, 9.000
6. Hardin-Simmons 5-1, .833, 10.333
7. Johns Hopkins 6-0, 1.000, 11.167
8. Salisbury 2-0, 1.000, 13.500
9. Washington and Jefferson 5-1, .833, 8.833
10. Wesley 4-0, 1.000, 12.500

Looks for all the world like Thiel should be above Ferrum, as should Johns Hopkins. Not sure what’s going on there. And our QOW number doesn’t include Ferrum’s game against Chowan — which it shouldn’t, really. Chowan has scholarship players now. If you include the Chowan game, it lowers Ferrum’s QOW even more. No teams left out that have a particularly good reason to be in according to the criteria.

West Region
1. Linfield 4-0, 1.000, 10.250
2. UW-Whitewater 6-0, 1.000, 12.000
3. St. John’s 7-0, 1.000, 10.571
4. Occidental 6-0, 1.000, 11.167
5. St. Olaf 7-0, 1.000, 9.857
6. Coe 5-1, .833, 11.000
7. Monmouth 7-0, 1.000, 10.714
8. Concordia-Moorhead 5-1, 9.167
9. Whitworth 4-1, .800, 9.800
10. Central 6-1, .857, 11.143

Well, Linfield doesn’t have the highest QOW but they hold the Walnut and Bronze. That usually counts for quite a lot. Coe is higher on the head-to-head win against Central, and St. John’s because of beating Concordia-Moorhead.

Regional rankings don’t measure the games that make national rankings most accurate — games between regions. They don’t see the difference between a one-point win and a blowout. All of these things get measured in a national poll.

Geography, philosophy, competitiveness, rivalry.

All of these factor in to how a school selects its conference affiliation and how conferences select members. And with movement starting back up in the past six months and more rumbling barely beneath the surface, it’s worth some rumination of the ramifications.

I’m sure any moment now, Post Patterns hall of famer Ralph Turner will comment with his thoughts about automatic bids spurring conference consolidation and predicting doom and gloom for Pool B in, say, 2013. But I’ll leave that to him. He can copy and paste it, I’m sure. 🙂

Let’s instead just take a look at where teams could go. This latest round of shuffling is still part of the aftershocks of the breakup of the Freedom Football Conference. After the 2003 season, the teams spread to the four winds, with teams heading to the NJAC, UCAA, E8 and Plymouth State left as an independent. The UCAA took on Worcester Polytech, Kings Point and Coast Guard and changed its name to the Liberty League. Then Coast Guard took its liberty of the organization after a year, announcing that after its second year it was heading to the New England Football Conference.

While the Liberty League maintains enough members to keep its automatic bid, it could use an eighth member as a buffer against losing it, which is where the Susquehanna rumors come in. Juniata and Moravian are talked about as heading to the Centennial, which is something that league has been looking at for a while in the name of ease of scheduling. Bringing the conference to nine teams would leave midseason open dates or non-conference games, but would require each school to schedule just one non-conference game, whereas the remaining eight MAC schools could schedule a full round-robin without fear of having the title decided on a tiebreaker.

So what’s next? If the Centennial wants to have 10 football programs, it could look to Catholic, which is within the general geography of the conference (40 minutes from Johns Hopkins and McDaniel, two hours from Gettysburg, slightly further from Dickinson and Franklin and Marshall). Catholic could also go to the MAC, which was a possibility back in the mid-90s when Upsala folded. Allentown (now called DeSales) eventually took the open spot. Juniata and Susquehanna’s departure would presumably open up spots in the MAC’s Commonwealth League (the MAC is split in some sports and unified in others, essentially scamming Division III out of as many automatic bids as possible). The Commonwealth is slightly better travelwise.

Washington and Lee has made little secret of desiring to compete in the Centennial. It sees itself academically as a peer of those schools and already competes in the league for wrestling. But it’s a long trip from W&L to anywhere in the league.

Elsewhere, Buffalo State is in its last year in the ACFC before moving to the NJAC. SUNY-Morrisville, which is a two-year school currently but going to four-year status, is said to be looking at the NJAC and would be a fit philosophically.

That’s the sticking point, usually, that word “philosophically.” In most parts of the country there are overlapping conferences geographically — in the Mid-Atlantic it’s the MAC and Centennial, in New York it’s the Empire 8 and Liberty League, in Ohio it’s the OAC and NCAC, etc. This is almost always because schools that think highly of themselves academically want to associate with other such schools, in hopes of what they think is leveling the playing field. (How level some of those fields are is a subject for the offseason.) So when people say, “why can’t we have one Upstate New York superleague?” and similarly in Ohio and such, that’s the reason. It’s just not going to happen. Heck, in Ohio it used to be that way, with Wittenberg and others in the OAC before breaking off and forming the NCAC. (Similarly with Centennial schools seceding from the MAC.)

But the bottom line remains — the Liberty League is a very insecure group, in terms of the automatic bid. There are just five full Liberty League members which play football, and that includes Rochester, which is evenly split between the Liberty League and University Athletic Association. Hamilton is in the league but plays football in the NESCAC. Kings Point and Worcester Polytech belong to the Skyline and NEWMAC in other sports. And the likelihood of Clarkson, Skidmore or Vassar adding football seems remote. The league needs two associate members for football to maintain an automatic bid unless Susquehanna can fill one of them.

And that’s just one part of the country. There are changes in the works elsewhere as well, with Rose-Hulman pulling out of the SCAC and returning to the Heartland. The SCAC is also safe at eight teams for now and for 2006, but is looking for more football programs. The ASC has nine football programs still after Austin’s departure for the SCAC. The Presidents might be done with their rapid expansion from five to eight (Thomas More, St. Vincent, Geneva), although Seton Hill is still sitting on the NAIA/D-III fence and doesn’t have to declare until next August or so.

With a proposal on the table to facilitate changes in conference membership without losing automatic bids, expect more movement to take place in future years.

Now we throw the floor open.