By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          As last Saturday went on, Drew Cronic was multi-tasking.

          One eye was figuratively on a TV or gametracker, while the rest of him was handling a honey-do list.

          “We were pressure-washing the back porch and working in the yard some, getting ready for Thanksgiving,” the Mercer head football coach said. “We had two new outdoor heaters, and I had to put those together.

          “There were really good instructions. I was able to get it done.”

          So, how do the heaters work?

          “I haven’t turned them on yet,” he said. “We might burn the whole place down.”

          As postseason contenders lost, as did champ Southern Conference champ Furman, stunned by Wofford, Mercer’s stock rose while Cronic worked.

          “Saturday was wild,” Cronic said. “We had about three different TVs on. We’re watching Samford and UT-Martin, we’re watching Gardner-Webb and Charleston Southern, Furman and Wofford, Western (Carolina) and VMI.

          “Just watching all that stuff was insane.”

A look at Gardner-Webb
Location: Boiling Springs, N.C., pop. 4,600
Enrollment: 2,000 traditional undergrads, 3,300 overall
Conference: Ohio Valley/Big South
Stadium: Norman Harris Field at Spangler Stadium, 8,500
FYI: Mercer and Gardner-Webb were old conference buddies in the Atlantic Sun together, from 2001-08. G-W, which moved up from Division II in 2001, left for the Big South in 2009. The Big South merged for football with the Ohio Valley Conference to start the 2023 season, both conferences having fallen below the minimum number of football programs needed for an automatic bid.

          But Cronic didn’t go to bed suddenly thinking there was no way the Bears could be left out.

          “I was honestly thinking that before Saturday,” he said. “But when you’re putting your hopes and dreams on 10 people sitting in a room, you never know what’s going to come out of there.”

          Alas, on Sunday’s FCS announcement show, Mercer was the second team displayed as an at-large, facing Gardner-Webb.

          Eight teams are seeded, and get first-round byes. Not all of them are conference champs. Half of the seeds aren’t champs.

          More conference champs are automatic qualifiers in, but are non-seeded teams pooled with the other at-large teams.

          Geography plays a major role in first-round pairings, although there are some early road trips, like Nicholls State to Southern Illinois and Sacramento State to North Dakota.

          There is no seeding after the top eight.

          Gardner-Webb is one of five conference champs on the road.

          Cronic doesn’t think the NCAA did any nice and friendly tasks by putting the Bears in the playoffs. He thinks they simply did the obvious thing.

          “They earned it,” he said. “People want to act like somebody did you a (favor). Our kids earned the right to be in the playoffs.

          Mercer is 8-3, and ranked 17th in Stats Perform poll and 20th in the coaches poll. Gardner-Webb is 29th in the Stats poll and 33rd in the coaches.

          Chattanooga joins champ Furman as the three Southern Conference teams in the field. Chattanooga and Mercer finished 6-2 in conference play. Furman’s seeding dropped when it lost to one-win Wofford, and Western Carolina lost its way out when it was knocked off by sub-.500 VMI.

          The last team in the field outside of the Southern Conference Mercer played is, ironically, Gardner-Webb, the Bears winning 45-14 on the road in 2022. Other than that, the Bears lost 48-34 to Austin Peay in 2019 and beat the Governors 28-7 in 2015 and 49-21 in 2014.

          In Mercer’s first full season back in 2013, the Bears beat reigning Pioneer Football League champ Drake 31-17.

          “We’ve come a long way,” Cronic said. “We’ve been knocking on the door. They’ve earned this opportunity.

          “I want people around here to get used to playing on Thanksgiving, and adjusting to that. It’s a lot of fun to play on Thanksgiving week.”