Raise your hand if you thought Capital was beat when it fell behind 27-17 with four minutes to go against Billings Senior in last Friday's AA state title game. A lot of us, if not all of us, should be doing our best Arnold Horshack - "Welcome Back Kotter" - imitation right now.

Now raise your hand if you spent the week thinking the Bruins weren't going to have any trouble putting away the Broncs. Again with the Horshack routine.

The Bruins ninth AA football title was unique in that it was both humbling and exhilarating. To Senior's credit, it out-hit and out-played the Bruins for all but four minutes.

The Broncs played a great game, which surely had many of Capital's most diehard fans stunned, but those elements only served to make it one of the most memorable AA title games in Montana high school history.

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Some may feel former Helena High product Mike Ferriter is under appreciated at the University of Montana where names like Lex Hilliard, Kroy Biermann and Dan Carpenter steal a lot of headlines.

Maybe so, but his play doesn't sneak past longtime UM assistant athletic director Dave Guffey. When a pass was dropped by a UM receiver a fidgety sports writer that wasn't paying attention asked, "Was that Ferriter?"

Guffey guffawed that question saying, "Ferriter would've caught it." Indeed, Ferriter, who is in his junior season, hasn't dropped many in his career and Guffey added, "He's been our best receiver this year."

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For the second consecutive year the NCAA FCS playoffs brought in a team with a 7-4 record. The University of New Hampshire followed Montana State, which pulled that off last year. The Wildcats, however, will have to play at No. 1 seed Northern Iowa.

MSU not only made the field at 7-4 a year ago, but they did so despite losing to a Division II team - Chadron State. To top it off the Bobcats hosted a playoff game and beat perennial power Furman 31-13.

MSU beat FBS Colorado in its first game of the season. New Hampshire beat FBS Marshall, but limped into the playoffs losing two of its last three games.

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The FCS selection committee did another good job with its playoff at large entrants. However, the committee isn't too up front about how it conducts its business. The guidelines leave a lot of wiggle room and there seem to be some unwritten rules about who gets in.

One thing the committee should do is designate some additional provisions for the four top conferences, which are the Big Sky, Southern, Gateway and Colonial in no particular order. It should be stipulated that teams from those conferences will receive preference in the event they have a record within one game of a team from any other conference, regardless of who they play in non-conference games. Simply because their conference has better teams overall.

This seems like what they do anyway and it seems fair, so they may as well be clear about it. This year Colonial member New Hampshire's 7-4 mark was the same as numerous other auto-bid conferences and worse than many teams from leagues that don't receive and automatic bid. Norfolk State out of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference finished 8-3 and the MEAC is an automatic bid league. But all of Norfolk's FCS wins came against teams in its league and the other came against a team from a lower classification.

Of the eight automatic bid conferences, the MEAC and the Patriot league are the two with the lowest standing. Rarely is more than one team from those leagues taken by the selection committee. The Southland, is right on the edge of being in the top four, and the Ohio Valley is slightly better than the MEAC and Patriot, but not as good as the Southland.

To be included from one of the leagues that doesn't receive an automatic bid a team just about has to go 10-1 or better and needs to play and beat a team from one of the elite autobid conferences or a FBS team. Dayton went 10-1 this year, but had no chance of making the tournament having played two sub-FCS teams.

Selecting the top four seeds is a similar matter. Rarely does a team not from one of the top four conferences get a top four seed. McNeese State was the exception this year, but the Cowboys not only went undefeated they beat at team from the FBS by 21 points and a team from one of the top four conferences by 23. All but two wins were by 20 points or more and they were behind in games for less than 30 minutes all season.