Buddy Pough smiled knowingly but said little.

Sure, there was plenty the South Carolina State Bulldogs’ head coach could have said. Plenty more he likely would have loved to have said. He offered up a simple answer of “I just don’t know.”

Smart answer coach. Anything else would not have weighed in your favor in the future.

At first glance, it seems a tough task to explain why South Carolina State, the seventh-ranked FCS team in the country, was picked to go to Boone, North Carolina and face Appalachian State in the FCS playoffs again this year. At second glance, things become clearer.

Plain and simple, South Carolina State got screwed.

The case for a home game

South Carolina State is 10-1 on the year with that one loss coming against an SEC opponent, South Carolina.

The Bulldogs easily could have led the contest 14-10 at the half. Of course, that’s the breaks in the game of football and it was the Gamecocks’ who led 10-7 at the half, but rest assured, the Bulldogs made an impact in that game.

“I told some guys on the staff, after that game against S.C. State, those guys were not going to lose a game the rest of the year,” South Carolina Gamecocks quarterbacks coach G.A. Mangus told the crowd at the Orangeburg Touchdown Club Thursday.

Mangus was right, and most of the Bulldogs’ wins were not even close. Along the way, wide receiver Tre Young developed into one of the most exciting offensive weapons in FCS football, tailback Will Ford broke the MEAC’s all-time rushing record, quarterback Malcolm Long blossomed into the player that everyone thought he might be coming out of Gaffney High School as the state’s Mr. Football, becoming SCSU’s first 2,000 yard passer, and the Bulldogs’ defense proved stingy.

And, the crowds turned out to take it all in. South Carolina State is ranked seventh in the FCS in attendance, but out of the teams that made the playoffs, the Bulldogs rank behind just Montana and App. State.

The case against a home game

Perhaps, Pough suggested, the folks on the FCS selection committee just didn’t think that much of the MEAC as a conference.

Maybe, it just came down to the idea that the FCS playoffs, at least in the first round, should be regionalized. At first glance, that makes perfect sense. In the top half of South Carolina State’s bracket, Richmond hosts Elon. Surely, Richmond deserves that. And, yes, in a head-to-head matchup, App. State should host the Bulldogs. The Mountaineers, led by perhaps the greatest FCS player of all-time, quarterback Armanti Edwards, are ranked ahead of the Bulldogs in the polls and at the gate.

But, the regionalized preference carries little weight if you let your eye travel at a diagonal up to the top right hand side of the bracket posted on the NCAA Web site. There, you will see that Villanova hosts Holy Cross and eighth-ranked McNeese State hosts New Hampshire in a battle of 9-2 teams. Problem is, McNeese is from Lake Charles, La. The day-plus trip by land it would take to cover the over 1,500 miles between the schools annihilates the regional argument.

Could there have been more shady dealings involved here? It seems almost certain. At the very least, a great deal of disrespect was shown, but could it be worse than that.

MEAC Commissioner Dennis Thomas is on the FCS Selection Committee, and during his reign Hampton received two FCS playoff home games this decade. But, Thomas has gone on record recently stating that he prefers that the MEAC revive the Heritage Bowl, effectively taking Thomas’ conference champion out of the playoffs and matching them up against the SWAC’s conference champion.

Having a conference champion as strong as South Carolina State not get a home game, disrespected on a national level, can’t hurt Thomas’ argument for change in the future. Surely, he didn’t pull strings to make it happen, but it’s hard to imagine, with his stated intentions, that he got on a soap box for the Bulldogs.

The State Room on Sunday afternoon

The spread was nice.

Cookies, chocolate cake, hotdogs, hamburgers, apples, oranges, bananas and punch. A large flat screen television on the wall was tuned to ESPNNews, and every head in the building was tilted up, waiting. Excitement was in the air, at least for the players.

As for the coaches, they already had an inclination that things were not going to go the Bulldogs’ way. College teams swap film by uploading their games to a system they all share. Pough noticed that App. State was downloading a ton of South Carolina State film when he got into his office Sunday morning.

“That just made me wonder what they knew that I didn’t know,” Pough said.

It also highlights the manner in which all of this goes down. The FCS playoff selection has been likened to by Pough as “kind of a thing where you have all these back room dealings.”

But, while the coaches had an idea, the players who sprawled out on the carpet, leaned against the walls, huddled close together did not. When the announcement was made, the emotion was sucked out of the room all at once. Many of the Bulldogs’ players couldn’t believe their eyes. They were sure they had done enough to bring playoff football to Orangeburg.

The saddest thing is ... they did.

n T&D Sports Editor Brian Linder can be reached via e-mail at blinder@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5553.

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