- July 19th, 2010, 5:30 pm
#312434
just saw this on a CS.com forum:

UAalum72 wrote:teams being paired up by geography is music to my ears
Report of the NCAA Division I Championships/Sports Management Cabinet June 15-16, 2010 (http://web1.ncaa.org/web_files/DI_Champ ... -16-10.pdf), the 2010 lineup was just named (page 11) :
b. Football Championship Committee. The 2010 Football Championship: Big Sky Conference, Big South Conference, Colonial Athletic Association, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, Missouri Valley Football Conference, Northeast Conference (NEC), Ohio Valley Conference, The Patriot League, Southern Conference and Southland Conference.
There is also a clause for the 'earned-access' which I guess now applies to the PFL since the NEC and BSoC now have autobids. They lower the ranking needed to 20 because the field is larger. This also gives an opening in case of a late change of mind by the SWAC or Ivy (page 14)
(2) The cabinet also agreed to amend the championship earned-access criteria for the champion of a conference that is eligible for, but does not receive automatic qualification so that the average rank threshold moves from 16 to 20.
The committee also specified the bracket, ruling the first TWO rounds will account for geography:
(1) The cabinet agreed to amend the football championship selection, seeding, bracketing and hosting policies to accommodate the expansion of the bracket from 16 to 20 teams. It was noted that the best 12 teams would receive a bye as determined using the same criteria the committee uses to select teams for championship; the number of seeded teams will increase from four to five, consistent with the cabinet's policy to seed 25 percent of the bracket; opponents in both the first and second rounds will be paired according to geographic proximity (although teams from the same conference would not be matched against each other in any game that is the first game for both teams); and the minimum financial guarantee will be $30,000 for the first round, $30,000 for the second round, $40,000 for the quarterfinals and $50,000 for the semifinals.



- By thecomeback
- By jmclaughlin