FCS-Expanded Playoffs

[News from the FCS]

DALLAS (AP) -Delaware coach K.C. Keeler interrupted preparations for a Football Championship Subdivision playoff game by letting his players go home for Thanksgiving. He'll probably do the same for Christmas if the Blue Hens are still playing. The Division I football wing that uses a playoff system had to scrap the traditional four-week sprint to crown its champion when the bracket expanded this year from 16 teams to 20. Now the postseason is something of a slow-starting marathon with first-round byes for 12 teams and 42 days from start to finish. The most significant difference in the tier formerly known as Division I-AA is a bowl-like break of three weeks between the semifinals and championship game, which is moving to the Dallas area from Chattanooga, Tenn. By the time Jan. 7 rolls around, the FCS playoffs will be just 20 days shy of the famously long NBA playoffs. Keeler doesn't mind the starts and stops, though. He was happy to have a week to recover from a rough-and-tumble regular season in the Colonial Athletic Association. He and his players don't care how long they have to wait if they advance to the championship game. They face Lehigh, an opening-round winner, in the second round Saturday. "It's been a long, intense season living in this conference," said Keeler, who won an FCS championship in 2003 and played for the title again four years later. "It was really nice to have (the break), 'OK, we're kind of going into our second season. And now let's get away from it a little while and then we come back and get after it full force.'" Keeler prefers a little waiting around to what happened in 2007, when the Blue Hens were snowed in for two days after a playoff game, had to go on the road again the next week and had only two days at home before traveling to Chattanooga for the title game. They were blown out by Appalachian State. "We figured out

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