• Hi Guest, want to participate in the discussions, keep track of read/unread posts, upgrade to remove ads and more? Create your free account and increase the benefits of your BigSkyFans.com experience today!

Playoff Politics

S

Skippy

Active member
Gotta love it: Southern Utah is rewarded for its conference championship with a first round trip to Sam Houston, while Montana gets a first round home game. Almost makes winning the conference seem worthless.
 
BSC is a weak conference. Check the attendance figures for all playoff games. No venue will come even close to what Montana has at home. Thanksgiving weekend and they will put 20,000 butts in seats, far from a sellout but respectable. Regular season ticket price for a non-prime time game are about $30. The NCAA likes money, and a $600,000 payday is guaranteed Saturday.
 
I become more and more soured about the playoffs each year. The fact that they let in a 6-5 team, whether they had close losses to good teams or not, is a joke when there are teams with more D-I wins. Picking good losses over good wins makes no sense.

I can see why so many FCS teams leave the division for a chance for more money and to play a bowl, no matter how insignificant it is.
 
I'm not sure all of you are aware of how the playoff selection works…

1. Choose the 14 at-larges.
2. Rank & seed the top-8 who get byes.
3. Determine the matchups for the first round & which seed they'll play later (using the "bus trip" rule & what-not).
4. Choose the home teams for the first round, which is based on bid. The bids are almost entirely based on expected revenue from a home game (I doubt too many ADs want to go deeply into the red on this).


Montana got a home game because they'll easily outbid anybody.
SUU didn't get a home game because their resume wasn't good enough for a seed & their home attendance isn't very good.
I do think NoDak should've been in. They had better resumes than WIU, EIU, and UNH.
 
A couple of random tweets from those in the conference office...

[tweet]https://twitter.com/jon_kasper/status/668657836558123008[/tweet]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/BigSkyDeputy/status/668572079558496256[/tweet]
 
Here is the staggering attendance at SUU games this year: Averaged 5,580 in a 8,500 seat facility. Managed to get over 9,000 for the NAU game. As the first playoff game is by bid, they'd have to sell out, and charge $70 a seat to meet the expected turnout in Missoula. It$ about dollar$. Fair? No. Neither is life.
 
Just for the record, there were only 14,500 seats filled at the Griz game. Not even half of what was there at the season opener. I wonder what their bid to host a game was, and if they made money.
 
Unfortunately, the 'crowd' in Missoula was under 15,000 in a 25,200 stated capacity stadium(holiday and road conditions) but the lowest regular season ticket price was $35 this year(NCAA criteria, and they get the gate). So, SUU would only have to charge $60 per sold out seat. NCAA only took in approx. $500,000 in Missoula today. Thats why they got to go to Texas, and lose on a bad call. NCAA makes the rules, but can't make it right, or fair. SUU got the shaft. Griz will carry their ass home in a sack next week, from Fargo.
 
otis campbell said:
BengalBannMan, the attendance at the NDSU @ Montana game was 26,472. Just sayin'.
Click to expand...
Thanks. My mistake, I was thinking it was 29k. I was wrong.
I'm not sure what really kept the attendance down so much though, holidays yes, bad roads, no. I was in Missoula for lunch today traveling home from Spokane Washington, and the roads were perfect the entire way. Roads were bad on Tuesday, some Wednesday, but Friday and Saturday were great.
 
Shows how many season ticket holders don't live in the Missoula area, and without the right QB, their offense is impotent(witness the ISU game). Playoff ticket sales is spot market, lots of variables.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top