What in the world is going on in D1AA rugby in the spring?

Well it's split and divided and splintered. While the NCR teams are worrying about 7s, we could have a single road to a trophy but we don't. ACR is running their playoff with a final May 6 in Colorado. The teams going for that are Iowa State, Sam Houston State (who play off), Western Washington, and San Diego (who will work their way through a regional playoff).

These are all good teams. They are all conference champs. 

Meanwhile, CRAA's playoff has the California D1AA conference entering its playoffs, with Sacramento State and Fresno State hosting semifinals. And they will take on the top two from Florida the weekend of May 6. Who will be in that Florida final? Yeah, we don't know. Could be anyone.

But ... the point is, if we had a final eight of Iowa State, Florida State, Florida, (or South Florida), Western Washington, Sac State, USD, Fresno State, and SHSU, that would be a really enjoyable playoff to watch. Hopefully next time.

Anyway, what this D1AA landscape also hits us with is very little crossover between leagues. So ranking teams in this second half of the school year has been difficult—so difficult that we kind of bailed on doing it.

So here is our shot at it. The Florida teams are all very close because they have similar records (and we have kind of ignored the forfeits because they were just paperwork issues and the results are the results. Florida State, Florida, and South Florida ended up 1-1 against each other. If we go by points difference, Florida State has a slight edge over Florida, which has a slight edge over South Florida.

Where we put those teams ... is a bit of a guess. We think the top 12 or so teams here would be pretty competitive with each other. But somebody has to rank them, so here goes: