Saturday, November 21, 2009 12:48 PM CST
FCS football playoffs, Panthers too hard to figure
By BRIAN NIELSEN, Sports Editor
bnielsen@jg-tc.com
No, no, no. I’m not going to sit and dissect all the at-large playoff possibilities.
Figuring out the Eastern Illinois football team I’ve seen week after week is mind-boggling enough, let alone trying to analyze which of the 20-something possibilities should crowd into the 16-team Football Championship Subdivision playoffs when the NCAA announces that field Sunday afternoon on ESPN News.
Oh, sure it’s easy enough to see that it would help if 7-3 South Dakota, just ahead of EIU in the two main FCS polls, would lose to a 1-9 Western Illinois today making EIU’s 21-10 Thursday night loss to a now 4-7 Tennessee State team not look so bad.
All the comparisons of records, schedules and scores between the likes of Eastern Illinois, Montana State, Liberty and the like could be put to rest if Jacksonville State just beats Eastern Kentucky this afternoon and allows an EIU team licking Thursday’s wounds to start celebrating an outright championship in an Ohio Valley Conference where everyone’s head got bloodied.
That Jacksonville State win over Eastern Kentucky is what most would say is supposed to happen even though EIU lost to Eastern Kentucky and beat Jacksonville State.
It has been that kind of an OVC football season which began with arguably the best team Jacksonville State knowing it was ineligible for the league championship or NCAA playoff berth and ended, at least for Tennessee State, with coach James Webster announcing his resignation – apparently with his other choice being fired – minutes after beating the EIU team that at least shares the conference championship.
Maybe you are among those who were in O’Brien Field stands both the past Saturday and Thursday trying to understand that UT Martin, which looked helpless allowing 49 points in three quarters before Eastern Illinois showed mercy in its 49-13 win, actually won 28-7 over that Tennessee State team that held EIU to three points through three anemic quarters.
That’s probably more baffling than the fact the Panthers fumbled away a game and lost 36-31 to an Eastern Kentucky team that is now 5-5 and then pitched nearly a perfect game in a 28-20 win over a now 7-3 Jacksonville State whose only other losses were to Georgia Tech and Florida State.
To think a month ago many of us around here were complaining about how unfair it was that while Jacksonville State was ineligible for a championship because of Academic Progress Report penalties, the OVC was still counting the Gamecocks’ games on other team’s league records even though Tennessee State did not have to play Jacksonville State this year.
Now that questionable inequity could be EIU’s saving grace as long as Jacksonville State drops Eastern Kentucky to 5-3 in the OVC leaving the Panthers as the champion of this parity party with a 6-2 league record.
If Eastern Kentucky wins today, then EIU has to hope several other at-large contenders fall, like New Hampshire losing to 5-5 Maine team and Montana State not upsetting the FCS Coaches poll leader Montana.
Wait a minute. I said I was not going to get into that.
Deciphering all that stuff is the job of the NCAA selection committee not some flunky like me.
Kyle Schwartz, the OVC assistant commission for media relations, assured the league has sent information to advisory committees trying to help causes for OVC teams.
EIU would have to hope the committee would pay more attention to the week the Panthers conquered a Jacksonville State and Payton Award candidate Ryan Perrilloux and not the 16-10 excuse-me win at Murray State that had such a bad season it fired its coach Matt Griffin with one week left in the season.
EIU has to hope the committee got a tape of Jake Christensen’s 18-for-21 passing, 322-yards and four touchdowns against UT Martin and that it couldn’t watch ESPNU five nights later when he was intercepted three times in a 12-for-32 game against Tennessee State.
At this point, the Panthers would settle for being the 16th of 16 teams chosen for the playoffs, most likely sending them to the geographically convenient first-round game at Southern Illinois, No. 1 in the Sports Network rankings.
Those who saw Thursday’s EIU game might consider that a mission impossible.
But in this hard-to-figure 8-3 season changing from week to week, the Panthers might just be due to shock us again.
Brian Nielsen is sports editor of the Journal Gazette/Times-Courier. Contact him at bnielsen@jg-tc.com or 238-6856.
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