LAST FOUR IN: Samford, Nicholls, North Dakota, Illinois State
FIRST FOUR OUT: Albany, Tennessee-Martin, Southern Utah, McNeese
The Missouri Valley Conference continues to hold strong with six current bids. A newcomer has emerged though, as Illinois State enters and Northern Iowa exits. Nicholls also jumps onto the tree, replacing Chattanooga. This pulls the Southland even with the Southern at three bids a piece. Holy Cross replaces Colgate as the new automatic for the Patriot, though the league seems more and more likely to be a one-bid entity. There was also a desire to strip San Diego of the Pioneer’s automatic, but there’s nobody who’s really any more deserving at this point, so they’ll be left be (for now).
There was a good number of shake-ups near the bottom of both the rankings and the bracket cut off. One very interesting riser is North Carolina A&T. The Aggies become one of the seventh and eighth FCS teams to beat an FBS in 2017 (they beat Charlotte). The other winner was Idaho State (who beat Nevada). North Carolina A&T would actually make the bracket right now, but as the likely champion of the Mid-Eastern, they would be selected to play in the Celebrations Bowl against the Southwestern Champion. Although, it’s not impossible they make the tournament, if they lose a conference game to their champion, which happened last season. Coincidently, A&T beat FBS Kent State last year.
Big Sky (2): Eastern Washington*, North Dakota
Big South (1): Charleston Southern*
Colonial (4): James Madison*, Villanova, Richmond, New Hampshire
Missouri Valley (6): North Dakota State*, South Dakota State, Youngstown State, Western Illinois, South Dakota, Illinois State
Northeast (1): Duquesne*
Ohio Valley (2): Jacksonville State*, Tennessee State
Patriot (1): Holy Cross*
Pioneer (1): San Diego*
Southern (3): Wofford*, The Citadel, Samford
Southland (3): Sam Houston State*, Central Arkansas, Nicholls
* League Champion and automatic bid
