LU, Big South receive good news in football

Well, what the heck are the Big South’s football coaches going to grouse about at this summer’s kickoff meeting?
The main topic of consternation since the league’s inception in 2002 was the conference’s lack of an automatic berth into the Football Championship Series’ 16-team playoff.
Last week, the NCAA approved expansion of the tournament field to 20 teams beginning in 2010, and the Big South and Northeast Conferences gained automatic berths into the field.
In 2010, there will be an even split of 10 automatic berths and 10 at-large bids, adding another round and a fifth week to the postseason. The top 12 teams in the field will receives byes into the second round.
Big South and Northeast coaches? Well, they’re understandably giddy.
“I can’t remember ever going to a head coaches meeting down in Charlotte where this wasn’t the most talked about item on the docket,” Liberty coach Danny Rocco said. “So I think it’s great news.”
In 2010, the Big South will have had six full-fledged Division I teams playing together for two years, a requirement for a conference to earn a bid. Stony Brook, which played as an independent in 2007, will join the league in 2008 as an associate member in football only.
Until then, there is potential for the Big South champion to earn an automatic bid if it meets certain criteria. It’s similar to the system that allows a team from a non-BCS league (like Hawaii or Boise State) to earn a berth in one of the five BCS bowls.
To qualify for an automatic berth, a champion from a non-auto bid league must:
w Win at least eight games against Division I opponents.
w Win two non-conference games against teams from auto-bid leagues.
(The current auto-bid leagues: Gateway, Southern, Colonial, Patriot, Big Sky, Ohio Valley, MEAC, Southland.)
w Be ranked 16th or higher in an average of The Sports Network Top 25, the coaches poll and the Gridiron Power Index, a BCS-style ranking of FCS teams.
The new system places added emphasis on Liberty’s non-conference schedule, in particular games against Western Carolina (Southern), Youngstown State (Gateway), Lafayette (Patriot) and Elon (Southern).
To have any shot of earning an automatic bid, the Flames will have to win at least two of those games. In reality, they’ll probably have to win three, and win them impressively, to make a move in the requisite polls.
Liberty finished last year ranked No. 31 in the GPI. Early losses to William & Mary and Elon kept the Flames from ever making a serious move in the polls.
“There’s certainly added reason to win those games, to allow ourselves to position ourselves to be a playoff team,” Rocco said. “Still, the No. 1 priority has to be to win your conference.”
The NCAA last expanded the FCS playoffs in 1987, increasing the field from 12 to 16 schools. Since then, 28 schools have joined the FCS.
One hundred and sixteen schools currently play FCS football, with six more schools making the transition to full Division I status, including future Big South member Presbyterian.
That means only 13.7 percent of FCS schools advanced to the postseason. Compare that to men’s basketball, where 18.9 percent of teams qualify for the NCAA tournament and another 48 teams qualify for lesser postseason tourneys.
The expansion was viewed as a victory for the two neophyte conferences (the NEC started playing football in 1998), but not everyone was pleased with the NCAA’s decision.
Montana athletics director Jim O’Day expressed concern that the addition of a fifth week would cut into class time. Also, fitting every regular-season game into an 11-week window could be difficult.
“One of the major concerns for us is how are we going to fit this into our schedule,” O’Day told the Associated Press. “And for us, selfishly, it could mean changes to the Montana-Montana State game being at the end of the year.”