Grand Fork — Missouri’s sports director Kyle Moates served on the FCS Championship Committee for five years.
The ongoing discussion of seeding eight or more of the 24 teams in the FCS playoffs is nothing new to him.
“It was a hot topic when I was on the committee,” Moates said. , hoping there will be more seeds.We all wanted more seeds.Instead, we felt it would be a true national (focused) championship.Regional I don’t think there is anything against having more seeds from within the membership.
So what’s the holdup?
“It’s a financial problem,” Moates said.
The FCS playoffs have already lost NCAA money.
Of the NCAA’s 90 national competitions, only five are profitable: men’s basketball, men’s hockey, baseball, men’s lacrosse and wrestling. The rest is supported by huge profits from men’s basketball tournaments.
To minimize losses, tournaments in all sports other than basketball are regionalized in different ways. If the FCS playoff structure becomes more seed-based than regionalization, increased travel could result in more money being lost.
“We’re not the only championships having this debate,” Moates said. “There are other championships. I think the NCAA has 90 championships. Not all championships call for more seeds, but many do. ( The NCAA Tournament is) becoming geographic and many (sports) want to be seeded like Don men’s basketball and women’s basketball. It’s really an argument membership has but it’s a financial issue will be
With that said, Moats and UND Athletic Director Bill Chaves are keen to see how FCS leaders can make a 16-seeded, 24-team tournament financially viable enough for NCAA approval. I hope you will try to figure it out.
This desire to expand seed numbers is once again in the spotlight after the controversial NCAA FCS bracket was released last month.
First round hosts have traditionally been determined by monetary bids. However, the NCAA Playoffs Committee this year sent UND to Weber State ($41,683.50) despite a significantly higher bid ($127,500) than Weber State ($41,683.50). I was.
FCS Playoff Committee Chairman Jermaine Trux
The Commission gave Weber State a home game for a better regular season.
The decision irritated Chavez and Missouri Valley Football Conference commissioner Patti Viverito because it ran counter to past precedent.
“Playing at home makes a difference and you have to know the rules of engagement,” Chavez said. It’s just as good. Brackets.”
Bids submitted by FCS programs to host first-round matches vary widely.
Montana made the highest bid at $141,243.75. At the lowest, Idaho bid at his $30,392.93, and at the lowest he barely topped $30,000.
Among the regional teams, UND bid $127,500, while rival North Dakota bid $106,875. South Dakota law does not require schools to make bidding information public.
Not all teams may have submitted bids.
Southeastern Missouri, which is renovating its stadium, has responded to a request for public records from the Herald that it has no record of any bids submitted to the NCAA to host the FCS playoff games. Southeast Missouri was sent to Montana in the first round and lost.
The home team is 20-2 in the playoffs this year.
Given the importance of having games in the playoffs, Chavez and others pushed to seed the tournament with 16 teams.
“I’ve been a long time supporter of the seeded 16 teams for a variety of reasons,” said Chavez, who was the athletic director at Eastern Washington before coming to UND in 2018. We are going to have that conversation.”
make it economically viable
The biggest hurdle is making it financially viable to pass the oversight board and receive final approval from the NCAA.
According to Moats, this probably involved studying the worst-case scenario (maximum possible number of East-based vs. West-based games between seeds) and allowing the NCAA to add additional funding to the tournament to cover more costs. It includes offsetting costs so you don’t have to invest. loss.
“If all of these seeded games are East Coast vs. West Coast, and you have to charter to them all, what is that (cost) number?” Hori asked. “Let FCS Football think about how best to make that happen with their membership.
Is it feasible? Mots thinks so.
“I don’t think it’s impossible,” Moates said. “I never want to say that. I think it’s all considered, not just FCS football. It has to be fair based on the relationship with other sports. Increase the number of seeds and make it more national. We will be able to find financial ways to make it a non-geographical tournament focused on.”
Chaves said he looked forward to the discussion.
“I hope we can have conversations like this because I love this tournament,” Chavez said.
