The upgrade in FCS football in the Northeast continues. The Northeast conference will add ten scholarships in increments to push their total to forty.
With the Northeast conference getting an auto-bid to the playoffs starting in 2010, the extra scholarships should make NEC teams more competitive. Since the opening rounds are not seeded, but selected on travel considerations, UMass could be seeing NEC teams in the first round instead of Patriot League teams starting in 2010.
Speaking of the FCS playoffs, to accommodate the extra teams the NCAA will eliminate the bye week starting in 2010. This may not be as bad as it sounds.
It's likely the top 12 teams will have a bye the first week of the playoffs and the bottom eight teams will have a play-in game as suggested in this David Coulson article. (corrected numbers)
When Georgia Southern was making its great run of FCS championships under Paul Johnson, he always played eleven weeks in a row so that the Eagles would have a bye week going into the playoffs.
We'll just have to be one of the top 16 teams and avoid the play-in game. It will make playing a I-A game harder. Many FCS teams liked to schedule the bye week after the big effort against the BCS team.
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