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No Comments [ Add Comment ]Weber State focused on FCS home game bid
By JASEN ASAYOGDEN -- If Weber State defeats Eastern Washington next Saturday to finish 8-0 in the Big Sky Conference, the Wildcats will have a strong case to be seeded as one of the top four teams in the FCS playoffs.
But the Wildcats cannot take anything for granted, which is why athletic director Jerry Graybeal said the university submitted a bid prior to Friday's deadline that was above the $30,000 minimum mark to host a first-round playoff game.
"In the playoffs, home games are the best way to get to the championship," said Graybeal, who declined to give the specific bid amount.
The four seeded teams in the 16-team field are guaranteed home games in the first two rounds, as long as they win, and since the Big Sky is the third-ranked conference in FCS, the league has a good chance of landing a seed.
Montana is also in the running, however the Wildcats beat the Grizzlies earlier in the season and that head-to-head result could be a deciding factor.
"I think they have a very strong case for it," Big Sky Conference assistant commissioner for media relations Jon Kasper said about WSU should the 'Cats be 8-0.
"We as a conference we would be very disappointed if Weber was not one of the top four seeds."
But nothing can be taken for granted.
Since there are eight conferences with automatic bids, not all conference champions will be seeded. There have also been cases where conference champions were not even awarded home games.
Last year Wofford won the Southern Conference's automatic bid, but was sent to Montana.
"It is very political," said Montana athletic director Jim O'Day.
O'Day serves on the Sports Committee that ultimately chooses the eight at-large teams to join the eight automatic qualifiers, as well as which teams get seeded and which get home games.
O'Day is in a tough situation since both the Wildcats and the Grizzlies, teams he argues for, are hoping to get a coveted seed.
"I think the one thing that both (Nichols State athletic director) Richard Bernardi and I do is to look out the best we can for the west, and try to get as many teams from the west as we can in the playoffs," O'Day said.
There are five factors in the decision for awarding home games. Weber State has an edge in two of the categories: the quality of the facility and the team's performance.
Another factor is the well-being of the student-athletes, meaning how much travel and missed class time there will be, and since Weber State is one of the western teams, visiting opponents will have to fly to Utah.
The Sports Committee usually tends to regionalize first-round games, so that teams in the east can bus to games and save money. Western teams usually fly anyway, so a game in Ogden would not be that different from any other university in the west.
However in two other factors -- the revenue potential plus estimated net receipts and the attendance history and potential -- WSU is behind nearly everyone else.
Only two other potential playoff teams have a lower attendance average than the Wildcats, who average 6,524. That number is 67th out of the 119 FCS teams.
In their bid, the Wildcats were optimistic that they could get a big crowd for a playoff contest.
"You have to try and factor in what kind of crowd and we just took our last crowd and factored on at least 8,000 people coming into the game," Graybeal said.
Graybeal also noted that he feels some universities submit around the minimum bid just so they can say they bid on a home game, but are not too serious about getting a game in their stadium.
"We're not trying to do that, we're trying to get the bid," Graybeal said.
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