#7 Tanner Trosin will lead #7 SOU this Saturday in the first round of the NAIA FCS
@UMW_Bulldogs @racetodaytona @Play_NAIA @CCSaints
In a mere 30 days the 2015 NAIA FCS National Championship will take place in Daytona, Florida. The defending champions are the #7 seed, and won’t likely get another home game after this Saturday.
I’ve been criticizing the NAIA’s system of ranking for over a year now, but the voting coaches don’t seem to be paying me any attention. Instead, they continue to focus on number of losses and proximity to NAIA headquarters in determining the rankings.
Carroll College is trying to help fix things in basketball by providing computerized rankings weekly to the voting coaches. Will the coaches consider the more objective rankings in their polling? That remains to be seen.
In the meantime, I started poking around at some stats after looking at game-by-game stats for Dickinson State on Massey Ratings. My first question was, why is Dickinson State in the playoffs instead of Montana Western? Dickinson State barely beat 0-10 Montana Northern, and they lost to Rocky Mountain (who Montana Western beat twice by a combined 44 points). Montana Western’s three losses were all by less than a single score to teams in the top ten. Dickinson State’s two losses were to unranked teams. Voting coaches obviously aren’t looking past the number of losses.
Then I read today here that “KWU is 0-2 all-time in the NAIA FCS, losing 48-0 to Evangel (Mo.) in 2001 and 45-7 to Sioux Falls in ’02”. So I got to thinking that maybe I should delve into the history of how Frontier Conference teams do in the FCS vs teams from the Kansas College Athletic Conference (home of Kansas Wesleyan and Tabor) or the North Star Athletic Association (home of Dickinson State).
Last year Frontier Conference teams, who weren’t playing each other, went 4-0 in the FCS, winning by a combined score of 210-94 (none of the games were decided by less than two touchdowns). For some reason, the coaches felt like the Frontier Conference deserved no more than two teams in the FCS following that performance.
Over the past few years, teams from the Kansas College Athletic Conference and North Star Athletic Association have gone 0-5 in the FCS, losing by a combined score of 62-195. Four of those games were decided by two touchdowns or more. For that performance, the coaches included three teams from these two conferences instead of more deserving teams like Montana Western.
Posted on November 19th, 2015 under people. Tags: football, Nikon D750, Raider Athletics, sports photography, tanner trosin. Comments: 1
