Playoff primer: What are these pools?

From now until the end of the regular season you may well see a lot of Division III buzzwords floating about on our front page, here in the Daily Dose and on our message boards. Pool A, Pool B, Pool C, OWP, OOWP … what do those all mean?

Pool A, Pool B and Pool C are the labels given to groups (also known as Pools) of bids awarded to the playoffs. The field is 32 teams, who meet in five rounds of playoffs culminating in the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl on Saturday, Dec. 19, in Salem, Va.

Understanding Pool A is fairly simple — let’s just pretend that ‘A’ stands for automatic. Those are the 23 automatic bids that are awarded. If there’s a tie at the top of a conference’s standings at the end of the season, the conference itself is responsible for determining who gets the automatic bid. (Most, if not all, conferences separate two-way ties with the head-to-head result.)

If you are not in one of those 23 conferences, there are three bids set aside for you, which are referred to as Pool B bids. The best three teams out of that group, which encompasses all independents, the Atlantic Central Football Conference, the Eastern Collegiate Football Conference, the Upper Midwest Athletic Conference and University Athletic Association, get bids.

Every eligible team not already selected is dropped into Pool C, which consists of six truly at-large bids. At-large bids are determined using the NCAA’s criteria, which includes regional winning percentage, strength of schedule, head-to-head competition, results against common opponents and results against regionally ranked teams.

If your conference has an automatic bid and your team doesn’t win it, then you are only eligible for Pool C bids. If your conference doesn’t have an automatic bid, you are eligible for Pool B or Pool C.

Q: How can my team guarantee it will get into the playoffs?
A:
Win your conference’s automatic bid. There’s no guarantees otherwise. If you’re a Pool B team, running the table is all you can do. No team has ever been left out of the playoffs in this system after running the table, regardless of strength of schedule. But one-loss teams with a weak schedule have not been as lucky.

Q: When will we find out which brackets meet in the national semifinals?
A:
On Selection Sunday. They are not predetermined and do not rotate. The NCAA committee determines who it thinks the two best No. 1 seeds are in the bracket and makes sure they are set on opposite ends, to meet in Salem.

Q: If the two best teams are in the same region, will they be placed in separate brackets?
A:
This is at least possible, but highly unlikely. They don’t seed this tournament like a D-I tournament, unfortunately. Teams are placed in groups according to geography and seeded, though keeping teams from having to travel 500 miles in the first round is more important to the NCAA than maintaining proper matchups.

Q: There are a lot of criteria to go through. How can I tell where my team stands?
A:
The NCAA releases regional rankings after Week 8, 9 and 10. They use the same criteria that they’ll use to select at-large teams, so they’re a good indication of where teams in the same region are relative to each other. However, being No. 6 in one region doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ahead of a team that’s No. 7 in one of the other three.

Q: So if I’m ranked eighth in these rankings, I’m in the playoffs?
A:
No. There are still the 23 automatic bids. They’ll all get in first. Take the 23 automatic bids out of the rankings (and keep in mind some conferences don’t have anyone in these rankings) and three Pool B teams, then the remaining seven get in.

Q: Why doesn’t the NESCAC get an automatic bid?
A:
It doesn’t want one. The league doesn’t want to participate in the NCAA playoffs in football.

Q: I have a question you haven’t answered. What do I do?
A:
E-mail info@d3football.com and/or post below in the comments section.

7 thoughts on “Playoff primer: What are these pools?

  1. Pat:
    Thanks for the great review of how the 32 teams get chosen. My BIG gripe is the automatic bid system which allocates 23 of the 32 places to conference champs. That is almost 3/4 of the playoff slots. This allows weak teams from weak conferences to get bids ahead some stronger teams that might be available to fill a lot of the 23 “automatic” slots. There are many examples over the years of these weak teams, who get automatic bids, being crushed in the first round of the playoffs. It seems that there must be a better way to bring the strongest 32 teams from DIII to the playoffs. Any suggestions??

  2. Piperarcher –

    It is difficult for me to have any kind of gripe with the current system for deciding playoff participants, especially one that allows 32 teams a shot at the title. It would be one thing to complain if the system annually failed to include teams capable of winning the championship, or was based solely on subjective voting (a la the BCS “formula”), but there has been no field since the expanision to 32 teams that hasn’t included the best 16-20 teams in the country.

    The subjective components (Pool B, somewhat, and Pool C) of the system are limited in scope, and still have an objective basis to some degree. It was not that many years ago that many conference champions were not invited to the playoffs, and it was unheard of for two teams from the same conference to make it.

    By eliminating “weak” conferences from consideration, you introduce a wholly subjective component to the selection of the entire field. Plus, the framework for deciding which conferences are “weak” is just as likely to lead to worthy teams being left out. Would some conferences just be considered perpetually weak and never have a shot at the playoffs? Would it be fair to use the prior year’s conference strength to evaluate whether the conference’s 8 or 10 teams have a chance this year? When would the conferences know if they are shut out of the playoffs?

    None of these questions are answered easily. Certainly the fairness of these options pales in comparison with being able to decide it on the field for more than 3/4 of the teams that play in Division III. If you take away the automatic bid for so-called “weak” conferences, those conferences are likely to get weaker, or at the very least become more top-heavy.

    For an example of how gaining an automatic bid can strengthen a conference, just look at how competitive the President’s Athletic Conference has become. Although W&J is still the perennial favorite, the conference has routinely placed more than one team in the top 25, and has placed two teams in the playoffs a few times over the last several years.

    In 1990, a bid was much harder to come by, so it could be argued that it shoul be more cherished. But I love the current system for the fact that it sets a full and fair field, and gives everyone a chance to control their own playoff destiny.

  3. Piper, respectfully, your premise of getting the top 32 teams into the playoffs does not even occur in D-1.

    It won’t happen. It is antithetical to the philosophy of D-III. IMHO, the biggest boost to D3 athletics has been the Pool System that has provided an accountable way for all student-athletes to seek an NCAA playoff bid in their sport.

    Look at what has happened to Pool B independents in the last 10 years. See post #1766 for the list of independents.

    http://www.d3boards.com/index.php?topic=3800.1766

    Because of access to the playoffs, schools are adding sports!

    Look at all of the new Pool A conferences (conferences that 7 or more full and affiliate members) since 1999…

    NJAC, E8 and LL in the East plus ECFC in 2011; ASC, USA South and Pres AC in South; NATHC in the North; Northwest and SCIAC in the West plus UMAC in 2011.

    http://www.d3football.com/playoffs/99/nov13.htm

    The ECFC was formed to provide comparable teams and programs the opportunity to compete in a conference. Sure, the ECFC champ may end up as the number 8 seed in the “East” bracket in 2011, but there will have been meaningful conference games for each campus community to experience being played in November, maybe for the first time ever. One might even argue that a game at Gallaudet and Mount Ida for the ECFC championship in 2011 (the newest conference in D-III) might have more impact on campus communities than another OAC championship for Mount Union.

    The joy in D-III is going for the conference championship amongst peer institutions. There are 23 big stories as conference championships are determined and we are getting close to that.

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