HB88 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 08, 2023 11:45 am
While the pre-season love is nice (and novel), I don't sweat too much over a handful of slots. It is AWESOME that we are in the Top-Ten which means if we take care of business we will be a seed for the playoffs. Regardless, I hope our players will not be distracted by the 'rat poison' of praise and will simply work hard, stay focused, and KICK ASS!!! Go Dins!!!
Players need to focus on Playing. Coaches need to focus on Coaching.
The rest of us can focus on free-range fig farming or our own original origami. Or we can RAIL against the disrespect that SoCon Teams have received from FCS Pollsters, Prognosticators, and Pundits since Appy and GaSou hit the road to irrelevance over a decade ago.
If the ‘work’ of these (mostly) non-Football people didn’t matter, railing against it would be tantamount to emulating the work of Head Coach DonQ and his Asst HC Panza. But FUBeAR has been paying close attention over this decade and he has come to realize 2 ‘hidden truths’ which have suppressed (perhaps oppressed) the positive outcomes available to SoCon Teams and to the Furman Football Team.
1) The current Playoff system (byes, Home fields, etc) all but ensures that seeded Teams will make the Quarterfinals, while also all but ensuring that the top 4 seeds will make the semi-finals, and the top 2 will be in the Championship game. This is not a ‘perfect reality,’ but it is a statistical reality. It is a Triple- or Quadruple-stacked deck that FUBeAR has learned is aptly described as “structural determinism.”
2) The Playoff Selection Committee IS influenced, heavily influenced IFBO, by Polls, Prognostications, and Punditry. Their selections of Teams to the field, their selection of Seeded Teams, and their ordering of the Seeded Teams aligns more with these 3P’s than it does with logical assessment of W’s & L’s - outside of the prior year(s) Playoff results…which, as previously noted, were shaped (to some meaningful degree - exactly how much is impossible to assess, but it is definitely greater than 0) by structural determinism.
The crimes of 10-1 / 10-0 FCS Samford being a #6 Seed last year (when they should have been a #1 or #2 Seed) and 10-1 ETSU being a #7 Seed in 2021 (when they should have been Top 4) prove the above…as did both of these Teams losing to NDSU, which, in 2022, for example, at 9-2 with only 1 very low Top 25 win on their resume, did not deserve to be the #3 Seed.
Of course, SoCon Teams need to “prove it on the field,” but if the only opportunity to do so is provided while playing with a Triple- or Quadruple-stacked deck, that’s just not going to happen very often. The SoCon is better than the Big Sky, far better than the CAA, and catching up to the MVFC…but all these ‘old guard’ ever talk about - STILL!! - is how down the SoCon is since Appy and GaSou took all their Nat’l Championship Flags and moved to Irrelevant Island. It’s stupid.
FUBeAR will continue to rage against these miscreants and sure welcomes any help from any FU and/or SoCon fans. DigitalWar is Hell…but you’ll survive. Guaranteed … just like the Big Sky getting 3 or more undeserved Seeds.
