Frontier Conference battles on
@EOUAthletics @MontanaTechFB @MTechDiggers #NAIAFootball @racetodaytona @Play_NAIA
As predicted, the Frontier Conference teams beat their opponents in the first round of the NAIA football playoffs (even though the NAIA coaches seeded them much lower than Massey and hence EOU had to hit the road to win). Also as predicted, some of those non-Frontier Conference playoff teams did not belong in the playoffs, many losing by 30 or more points. Missouri Valley lost by 59 points!
I know the coaches aren’t listening to me, but a grass-roots effort to change the current system has to start somewhere. First of all, two teams from incredibly weak conferences should not be going to the playoffs. The Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference, for instance, pretty much is a lock for two teams even though those two teams nearly always get creamed in the first round. Tabor and Sterling lost by a combined score of 109-38. The Heart of America Conference is already split into divisions. Taking more than one team from each division is unfair. Missouri Valley showed why a team finishing second in a Heart of America Conference division doesn’t deserve a playoff game. Three or four teams from a conference that has sent exactly one team to the national championship ever? Please.
SOU won the national championship in 2014 without winning the Frontier Conference. The Raiders also made it to the national championship game in 2015 without winning the Frontier Conference. A Frontier Conference team has made it to the national championship game in 10 of the last 14 years (winning the championship in 7 of those years). So why do the coaches fix the voting so that no more than two Frontier Conference teams get in the playoffs but two go from KCAC and three or four go from HOAC?
Massey has Montana Tech at #2 and Eastern Oregon at #4. Both are deserving of another home game in the playoffs, but the coaches have voted for the teams with easier schedules to get home games instead. EOU will likely get beat by Marian on the road this weekend. Montana Tech, if they are healthy, has a good chance of beating Reinhardt on the road.
