The Lonestar decides its conference champion this week.
We take a close look at that weekend here: Bearkats, Sooners Lead Lonestar Playoff Field
But it's a good time to take a look at the CRAA D1AA playoff situation. The May 2-4 CRAA Finals weekend will have semifinals and final in Indianapolis. We will have to wait for all of the participants because of how the schedules fall. We know the Heart of America champion. That's Iowa State. We have the Lonestar Champion decided this week. The East Champion will come out of the Florida Conference, the first time that we Florida enter this particular championship. And the West Champion will be decided in a playoff between NCRC and California.
The hope is to get something more regional going, because the teams out of the West are in a sort of bottleneck. But the future plans might have two the double-game playoff weekend be a quarterfinal-semifinal situation with winners from Florida, HOA, Lonestar, California South, California North, and NCRC, plus two others. Then the final would be on the CRAA finals weekend.
Where are we on the other competitions?
In California South San Diego is 3-0 and plays their closest rivals Claremont Colleges. These two played two weeks ago with the Toreros winning 42-9.
In California North American River is 3-0 and found their sternest test last week against Chico State. They take on 1-1 Fresno State this weekend.
The NCRC has been, of course, the weirdest one. Western Washington, hosting Oregon State this week, is favored to be first, but everyone has three games left to play so there remains a variety of permutations. If Oregon State beats WWU and Boise State wins at Oregon then BSU and WWU will be in a virtual tie. Oregon, the one team to beat Western Washington this season, are actually sitting 5th out of five, but a win over BSU could put them in the thick of things once more.
In Florida, St. Thomas is certainly favored to run the table and in fact this week they will be fielding one side against Life University and another against Florida Atlantic. The other two games in this conference are really intriguing. South Florida sits 2-1 and they take on a very handy Florida side that is an unlucky 0-2. And then 2-1 Central Florida plays 3-1 Florida State. The league is separated North and South and four teams make the the conference semis. St. Thomas (currently 2-0) looks good for one spot from the South, and Central Florida could tighten its grip on another spot with a win over FSU. South Florida, ironically, is in the North, and a win over the Gators would go a long way to securing a semifinal spot for them.
