The Fighting Irish 7s is set for this weekend and it's become a much-anticipated event on the college 7s calendar.

This is the first of five automatic qualifiers for National Collegiate Rugby's 7s championships, which will be held in New Orleans May 28-30, and it's become huge.

The Qualifier Bracket has 32 teams in it, and will be a straight elimination bracket. Straight elimination is how NCR ran their 2021 May Madness competition, so this is a bit of a practice on how to deal with that format. Teams are put into brackets and if they lose their first-round game, that's it, that can't play for the Cup.

College 7s Tournaments Spring 2022

They still play, of course. There's a Survivor Cup, a Plate, a Bowl ... actually teams will end up with eight finals: Cup, Qualifier Plate (5th), Qualifier Shield (9th), Shield Consolation (13th), Survivor Cup (17th), Survivor Plate (21st), Survivor Bowl (25th), Bowl Consolation (29th).

Don't let the placement numbers fool you. Finishing 17th and winning the Survivor Cup will be an impressive feat—it means you lost your first game and then won four games in a row. The winner of the Qualifier Plate will also end up 4-1.

While this is an NCR qualifier, not all of the teams are targeting the NCR championship. Non-NCR teams are involved and in one sense this tournament is a protest of the division between NCR and USAR Rugby-member organizations. The sheer size of the tournament makes picking a favorite difficult. What we will say is this:

Adrian vs Western Michigan is a 1st-round game to watch. Same goes for Bowling Green vs Minnesota, Kentucky vs Michigan, and Illinois vs Louisville ... hmm ... apparently we think the MAC teams are all in for a close opening game.

Several D2 sides have an excellent chance to show well, including Adrian, Thomas More, and Marian, and we'd include small-college team Christendom in that list, too. Kutztown, St. Bonaventure (remember their head coach is something of a 7s expert), Iowa Central, Indiana, Ohio State, and Brown are all teams that might do well, and most of those have opening games where they are heavily favored. Wheeling vs Christendom is a game that in some ways could go either way, but if Wheeling wins well, watch out.