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FCS playoff expansion boosts Butler, not YSU
By Joe Scalzo
YOUNGSTOWN
When the FCS playoffs expanded from 20 to 24 teams last season, it was a big boost for Butler and the Pioneer Football League.
The Missouri Valley Football Conference? Not so much.
“It didn’t benefit our conference in any way,” Youngstown State coach Eric Wolford said. “It benefited a lot of other people.”
Butler, which plays at YSU today, became the first team from the non-scholarship PFL to make the postseason last year, earning an automatic bid by winning a share of the conference title. The Bulldogs then lost to Ohio Valley Conference-member Tennessee State, 31-0, in the first round.
YSU, meanwhile, tied for second in the MVFC, which was ranked first in the FCS but had just two playoff teams: North Dakota State and South Dakota State.
That still doesn’t sit right with Wolford, whose team tied for second in the conference standings, but he said he’s given up trying to figure out what the playoff selection committee is going to do.
“I don’t have the formula,” he said. “I know it’s a hot topic of discussion at the Missouri Valley Conference. All I know is what we can control and that’s playing well and getting better, so that way when we get into conference play, we can function at a high level.”
All but two of the 13 FCS conferences earn automatic playoff bids — the Ivy League and the SWAC choose not to participate in the postseason — and while some believe the PFL doesn’t deserve to get a playoff team, there are still 13 at-large berths.
In the committee’s eyes, YSU didn’t do enough to earn one last year.
“Bottom line is last year, they were in the playoffs,” senior tight Nate Adams said of the Bulldogs. “And we obviously came up a little short, which I’ve still got a knife in my stomach about that.”
Drawing a crowd
Butler is the second of three straight home games against lower-level opponents. The other two, Duquesne and Saint Francis, compete in the Northeast Conference, which has a 40-scholarship limit — 23 short of the FCS maximum.
Some YSU fans are upset about having to buy tickets to watch mismatches, so Wolford was asked at Tuesday’s press conference, “How do you sell this game to them?”
“I think the thing is, obviously if you’re a Youngstown State Penguin fan, you enjoy seeing your kids play,” he said. “We have a ton of kids that are within an hour radius, whether it’s Cleveland to Pittsburgh, and there’s a lot of [those] kids on our football team that are playing. You support your team.
“When we were at South Carolina or [if you’re a fan at] Alabama, you don’t necessarily worry about who you’re playing. You go to support your team and that’s part of being a fan.”
Wolford also said it would help attendance if the weather would cooperate — it rained for several hours before last week’s home opener — and if “we could keep our tailgate lots from being so much fun.”