We took a couple of weeks off from the D1AA rankings because there were so few 15s games going on.

Of course, there were some games going on in Florida, and as a result we had significant changes. Florida State ran into trouble late in the season and drop significantly. It's a shame in that FSU started well and unfortunately budget and scheduling issues too detailed to go into right now caused their forfeit one can really only conclude that injuries crept into the roster.

But that brings us also to the issue of forfeits. We're not fans of forfeits, but there are different types of forfeits. Do you forfeit a game because you've basically run out of players? Yes, that's not good but it does happen. That is what we think happened with FSU in their playoff game with St. Thomas. Meanwhile Boise State forfeited their league game against Western Washington almost entirely because of cost problems. (Notable that the NCRC 7s tournament last week, won by Western Washington, was played in Boise ... travel is tough for Boise State.) So do we ping Boise State for forfeiting? Yes, of course we do. You should play the games. But ... we're also cognizant of the cost issues for college rugby club programs.

So Boise State stays in the Top 40, but we do move them down to #40 because, ultimately, this ranking is about who would win a game between two teams right now. If we're not sure you can field a team, then, well, we have to move you down.

Same deal with Florida State. We just think FSU has more of a body of work and they hang around at #36. 

Big movers going up. Oh, well, we did warn you—St. Thomas. As we said, we were pretty sure St. Thomas was very good, but we needed that one big result to prove it. A convincing win over Florida is what we were waiting for, and it happened. St. Thomas goes up 10 spots to #11. Do they have a path to #1? Somewhat. The Florida teams will be playing bowl games in Houston, not playoffs, so they would need to be very emphatic. But it could happen. The spring D1AA spring playoffs could also potentially unseat Kentucky. We're still watching that.

The CRAA West Regional semis (San Diego, ARC, SJSU, WWU) and final will be this weekend. That's a big deal. The Florida final (Florida vs St. Thomas) will be this weekend. That's a big deal. Then we wrap it all up May 4. Those playoffs and bowl games might well shuffle around everything. Again.