Our FCS Bracketology is live again, for the first time since 2018. How does it work? The full explanation is available here, but the short version is that we use our Movelor power ratings to simulate the rest of the season 10,000 times, with FCS playoff selection included in each simulation. Those selections are determined by a formula which uses overall losses, wins over non-Division I teams, wins over FBS teams, Movelor itself, and WAB—Wins Above Bubble, a résumé metric popular in college basketball. This doesn’t exactly replicate the committee’s process, but it does a good job in backtesting of approximating the committee’s final output. Once we have all 10,000 brackets, we line up each team in order of average committee ranking, then build the bracket accounting for automatic bids and our understanding of the bracketing principles.
What our model’s seeing this week, and how Week 3’s action changed the situation:
Moving In: Central Connecticut State, Lehigh, Elon, Lamar, Southern Illinois, Abilene Christian
First, the automatic bid: CCSU takes over as the NEC favorite after beating Saint Francis (but more thanks to LIU’s home loss to Sacred Heart).
After CCSU, we have a lot of road winners:
Lehigh moves in and climbs far, not only taking over as the new Patriot League favorite but also aimed at a seed after beating Duquesne on the road. The Mountain Hawks got some help on the Patriot League front from Holy Cross’s loss to Rhode Island. Not a conference loss for the Saders, but Movelor now has Lehigh as the better team.
Elon also jumps directly into a seeded spot after beating Western Carolina on the road.
Lamar moves in after a comfortable win over Texas Southern down in Houston.
Southern Illinois moves in after beating up UT Martin, again on the road.
Our last at-large in the field, Abilene Christian lost to TCU but kept it closer than expected, improving Movelor’s expectations for them over the rest of the season.
Moving Out: LIU, Holy Cross, Monmouth, Incarnate Word, South Dakota, Towson
We mentioned LIU and Holy Cross above. The others:
Monmouth gave Charlotte its first win of the season. Movelor has the 49ers among the ten worst teams in the FBS. The likelihood of a win had been high enough to really boost Monmouth’s average résumé. No dice.
Incarnate Word dropped to 1–2 with the loss at UTSA. Excusable, but again the margin moved Movelor’s perceptions, with the Cardinals almost out of Movelor’s top 25.
South Dakota continued to struggle, needing overtime to hold off Northern Colorado. Last year was special. This year, so far, is not.
Towson had been the last team in the field, so their exit had more to do with others moving in than with them doing something to move out.
Moving Up: Rhode Island, Austin Peay
After the win in Worcester, URI’s aimed at a bye. APSU kept climbing after smoking Morehead State at home.
Moving Down: New Hampshire, North Dakota
New Hampshire had been a leader for a bye, but like Monmouth, they missed a really good chance at an FBS win. Losing at Ball State is fair, but it hurt the average UNH outcome.
North Dakota’s loss at Montana was again excusable, but it did move the Fighting Hawks out of a seeded position.
First Four Out: Villanova, South Dakota, Sacramento State, Southeastern Louisiana
Some usual suspects hang around the periphery. Expect there to continue to be a lot of movement these next few weeks as the season takes shape. Not only does every game change Movelor’s perception of how all the rest of the games are going to go, but Movelor is reactin especially dramatically right now. By October, it’ll have a better feel for what each team is, and its reactions will become more muted.
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As always, our probabilities page has more numbers from our model, while you can find Movelor’s Week 4 predictions here.
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