Less than 24 hours remaining before Montana takes the field against Montana State, its most bitter rival, at noon Saturday. It could be the final countdown to the Grizzlies’ last game of the season, or it could just be the clock ticking down toward their regular season finale.
At this point, that is the conversation dominating the narrative leading up the 116th Cat-Griz game. At 6-4 overall and No. 22 in the latest STATS FCS Top 25 poll, Montana is widely considered a bubble team for the 24-team FCS playoffs that begin next week. Depending on who you talk with, the Griz are already in — or out.
UM heac coach Bob Stitt
A recently released playoff bracket on nobowls.com, a website that proclaims itself to be “the FCS bracketology site”, has Montana in the first round with a home game against South Dakota State, the same opponent that came to Missoula for a first-round game last November. But over at fcs.com, Montana is nowhere to be found in the site’s latest playoff projection.
So where do the Grizzlies stand as their regular season concludes?
That’s what Jeff Tingey, Idaho State’s athletic director and the Big Sky’s member on the playoff selection committee, will determine with nine other athletic directors Saturday night. Those results will then be broadcast to the public Sunday morning at 9 Mountain Standard Time on ESPNU.
Tingey will spend the final weekend of the regular season just like he has spent the previous 11 weeks: watching the teams the NCAA assigned him to better evaluate those in situations very similar to Montana. Every week his is given four to five games to watch. This week there are just two teams that have Tingey’s focus: Cal Poly versus Northern Colorado and Weber State against Idaho State.
“There are a number of factors we use that are in no particular order,” Tingey said Thursday night, a day before he leaves for Indianapolis to join the selection committee.
Among those factors are strength of schedule, overall record, win-loss difference, conference standings and the NCAA’s Simple Ratings System (SRS), an algorithm developed by Princeton professors used to measure team quality. Team ratings are primarily influenced by strength of schedule and win-loss differential.
According to the NCAA handbook, “A team’s SOS measure is simply the average NCAA SRS rating of that team’s opponents for the season. A team’s WL measure factors whether a game was won or lost; the location of the game (home/away/neutral site); and the NCAA (sub)division of the opponent.”
If Montana is being considered in the same pool of teams that includes Weber State and Cal Poly, several things work against the Grizzlies in comparison. Though it does not appear to factor heavily into the committee’s decision, Tingey said conference standings are taken in consideration when trying to split hairs between teams. Currently, Montana is eighth in the Big Sky, a game behind the Mustangs (4-3 in league, 6-4 overall) and two games behind Weber State (5-2 in league, 6-4 overall).
The best Montana could do is climb into a tie for fifth with a win Saturday, which would bump UM to 4-4 in Big Sky play. If Cal Poly loses to Northern Colorado, both teams would then finish with 4-4 conference records.
Also working against Montana is its win-loss record on the road. Montana is just 1-4 this season away from Washington-Grizzly Stadium, including 0-4 in Big Sky road games, which is a prime area to pick up points in the SRS formula. In games between two FCS teams, 1.25 points are granted for each road win and just 0.75 points are awarded for home wins.
Cal Poly, on other hand, has three road wins, Including a 38-31 win over South Dakota State, balancing out their three road losses. The Mustangs are also 3-1 at home with only their contest in San Luis Obispo against the Bears remaining on the schedule. Weber State has fared a little better on the road than the Griz, with a 2-3 record and a chance to even it with a win at Idaho State on Saturday.
While the playoff committee, chaired this year by Moorehead State AD Brian Hutchinson, has released playoff rankings for the top 10 teams, it has not released the SRS rankings. It did not release those rankings until Nov. 22 last season. If that follows this year it leaves Montana 17 hours to wonder about its postseason fate.
