Playoffs, seeding loom as UI hits final stretch

There are three Saturdays to go before the start of the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs and there are still a lot of questions to answer for Idaho.

Can Idaho earn a first-round bye? How high up the seedings can the Vandals rise? Is there a chance Idaho can win out and not earn a bye?

While those questions will have to wait until the regular season ends, there is one question that has a simple answer. How important is being one of the eight teams to receive a bye? Extremely important.

The FCS playoff committee released its lone in-season rankings on Oct. 30. It gave a glimpse into the vision the committee had when it came to the top of the FCS.

The rankings only showed the top-10 teams, but the news was good for Idaho. The Vandals, who were No. 11 in the coaches poll and No. 10 in the Stats Perform poll at the time of the committee release, were No. 7. If that ranking were to hold, Idaho would have a bye in the first round of the FCS tournament and would host a second-round game.

Every seed matters even more in 2024 as it will be the first time that the top-16 teams will be seeded. The prior 11 seasons of the 24-team tournament, excluding the 2020 season when it was reduced to a 16-team tournament, only the eight teams that received a bye were seeded.

The bye means everything

Of course it goes without saying that a team that earned a bye in the FCS tournament was a great team — that is the reason it was given a top-8 seed in the bracket. However, in the 11 seasons that the tournament has invited 24 teams, there has been a void of Cinderella teams.

Since 2013, all 10 champions in a 24-team tournament have earned a bye. In fact, all 10 champions have been a top-4 seed. James Madison was the lowest seed (No. 4) to win a championship in 2016.

Of course, the tournament has been dominated by North Dakota State and South Dakota State, which have won 11 of the last 13 championships.

Take it a step further and out of the 20 teams that made the championship game (excluding 2020), 19 earned a first-round bye. The only outlier was in 2016 when Youngstown State was able to upset No. 2 Eastern Washington 40-38 to face James Madison in the championship.

Take another step back to the 40 teams that made it to the final four and 34 of the 40 teams earned a bye. Of those to make it that far, North Dakota State was unseeded last year and South Dakota State was in 2021, and both those teams have been dominant over the past decade-plus. Sam Houston State made it to the final four without a bye in 2015 and New Hampshire did it back-to-back seasons in 2013 and 2014.

Easiest remaining schedule

Taking the 10 teams that the FCS committee ranked last week, the Vandals have the easiest remaining schedule.

To finish the season, Idaho travels to Portland State, hosts Weber State and wraps up with Idaho State on the road — three teams with a combined record of 9-17 (.346).

Mercer, which was ranked eighth by the committee, also has a very easy schedule when it comes to FCS opponents. The Bears have games against VMI and Furman, which are a combined 3-14 (.176), however Mercer also has a trip to Alabama to face the Crimson Tide in eight days.

Big Sky opponents Montana State (No. 2), UC Davis (No. 5) and Montana (No. 10) all have games against each other remaining on their schedules.

South Dakota, No. 4 on the committee’s ranking, has three games remaining against teams with a combined 18-10 (.643) record. No. 3 South Dakota State has two road games against North Dakota (5-4) and Missouri State (7-2) to go.

Based on strength of schedule alone, Idaho has the easiest path to winning out the rest of the regular season compared to the other top contenders. There is a chance that three dominant wins by the Vandals combined with a couple of slip ups by teams ranked ahead of them could move Idaho up to as high as the top-4 or 5 seeded teams.

Strength of schedule concern?

There is an argument that with Idaho playing such a weak final stretch, that it could get passed by other teams with impressive wins down the stretch. According to the numbers, the Vandals have nothing to worry about on that front.

The reason is simple: the front half of UI’s schedule was loaded so much that a couple of weak games will not hurt. One of the metrics that the committee uses is the Massey Ratings. One of the tools that the Massey Ratings uses is SSF (strength of schedule including future games).

The Vandals have a current strength of schedule rating of 40.24, fifth-best in the FCS and the best out of the top-35 rated teams in the Massey rankings. Using SSF, Idaho’s strength of schedule is predicted to go down to 38.42, seventh-best in the FCS. Only South Dakota State, North Dakota State and North Dakota would pass the Vandals in the rating. Idaho would pass Northern Iowa (2-7).

Strength of schedule is one of the most important factors outside of the win/loss record of a team according to the FCS committee’s in-season report. Idaho has that locked down with its nonconference schedule and facing the top of the Big Sky early on in the year.

Based on the rankings of the FCS committee last week, the Vandals are set to get a first-round bye as long as they take care of business. If Idaho is able to do what it is supposed to do and win out, the fun will be scoreboard watching to see how the dominos fall.

Isbelle can be reached at 208-848-2268, risbelle@lmtribune.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @RandyIsbelle.