McFeely: After season of ups and downs, Bison deserve playoff seed

"I still don't know if I've caught my breath," Wisniewski said after the game. "We might need an oxygen tank on the sideline for next week."

As UNI offensive players and Bison defensive players were playing Keystone Cops in the confusion, running into each other trying to snag Wisniewski or throw a block for him, all that was missing was the theme song from "Benny Hill" and some whoop-whoop-whoops from the Three Stooges.

It was a wild ride.

Perfect metaphor for the Bison season.

What started as a sprint against three overwhelmed non-conference opponents went sideways midseason and then went hard for the goal line at the end. Head first, full stretch.

After a 48-27 victory over UNI on Saturday at the UNI-Dome, the Bison find themselves in a position few expected after they were run out of the Alerus Center by North Dakota and thumped convincingly in Brookings by South Dakota State.

NDSU finished regular season 8-3.

That's perhaps a game worse than most smart Football Championship Subdivision observers expected.

And when the playoff committee announces its selections for the 24-team postseason field Sunday morning, there is a better-than-zero chance the Bison get one of the top eight seeds and the first-round bye that goes with it.

At worst, they'll get a home game in the first round next weekend and will be heavy favorites to move into the second round.

So after all that all the drama and the message-board mania and the social media calls for coach Matt Entz's head and the nattering nabobs of negativity in the local media the Bison are in the playoffs and possibly headed for a seed.

"I told you guys earlier this week: You don't want to play the Bison," NDSU quarterback Cam Miller said.

Gotta admit: Didn't see this coming late in the afternoon on October 14.

Gotta be honest: While far from the dominant version of NDSU the FCS world has gotten used to since 2011, this team could do some damage in the playoffs.

The age-old cliched question: Would you want to play the Bison right now?

Well, aside from SDSU. The Jackrabbits are just that good.

But for everybody else the answer is a hard no.

"The thing I told our team in there is at the end of the day, it's how you finish," Entz said, standing on the dome turf not far from the Bison locker room after the game. "Sometimes there's bumps in the road. You have to out-work adversity. Out-think adversity. There's times we haven't played well. There's times we played really well at different stints during the season. But, you know, we've learned from our past and hopefully we can continue to move forward in a positive direction."

The Bison saved their best for last, no question. They will enter the playoffs with dominant victories over Southern Illinois, then a top-10 team, and on the road at UNI, a top-25 team playing for a postseason berth.

Both games had warts, but the Bison decisively now have what George H.W. Bush once called the "Big Mo."

Momentum.

On a day when No. 2-ranked Furman lost to one-win Wofford, No. 4 Montana State got blown out of the mountains by Montana, No. 7 Delaware was swamped by Villanova and No. 8 Sacramento State was drilled by UC Davis ... the Bison were going the opposite direction.

This team has some confidence again. Some of the old Bison swagger.

Will the committee give them a seed? They should. NDSU deserves it, just for the way it finished the season.

"You know, it's not really our decision," Wisniewski said. "There's not really anything I can do to have any impact on that. If we don't get a seed, we don't. If we're going to play next week, we're going to play next week and we'll be resilient. We're going to handle what we can handle and we're going to come out and put our best foot forward."

Right now, that's a pretty good foot.