Pool B increased to three

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The NCAA released an update to the original playoff breakdown and has come up with math that makes a little more sense: There will be three Pool B bids for 27 schools and six Pool C bids for everyone remaining, including the runners-up in the 23 conferences with automatic bids.

Teams eligible for Pool B bids: Becker, Blackburn, Carnegie Mellon, Case Western Reserve, Chapman, Chicago, Crown, Eureka, Frostburg State, Gallaudet, Greenville, Huntingdon, Husson, LaGrange, Macalester, MacMurray, Martin Luther, Minnesota-Morris, Mount Ida, Northwestern, Principia, Salisbury, St. Scholastica, SUNY-Maritime, Washington U., Wesley, Westminster (Mo.).

I won’t get too far into the details of how this happened but basically the formula was miscalculated because the football committee wasn’t told of two teams that were newly eligible for the NCAA playoffs this season.

Division III fans knew, and as usual, it was Ralph Turner who was among those trying to figure out the math and leading the way. We raised it with the NCAA a week ago and when we showed our work, we found we didn’t have the same number of eligible Pool B teams. (We also got the schools and conference involved, to press the issue.)

It’s not the first time a D3sports.com-covered sport has had a change in the Pool B/Pool C bid allocation. In fact, it happened in football in 2000.

At least this was caught in early October and not early November.

ATN Podcast: Eyes on New York

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Keith took the car out for a trip to upstate New York and came back with a pretty good game. What did Cortland State show Saturday in its win against Montclair State? Keith (and Cortland coach Dan MacNeill) give their thoughts in this week’s Around the Nation podcast.

Also, Keith and Pat talk about the many other big games of the day, including the gutty performance by Salisbury at St. John Fisher. By the way, there’s also some pretty interesting news for Salisbury, Wesley, Case Western Reserve and Huntingdon in the podcast.

You can load the podcast page in iTunes or can also get this and any of our future Around the Nation podcasts automatically by subscribing to this RSS feed: http://www.d3football.com/dailydose/?feed=podcast

Or you can click the play button below to listen.

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Gameday: Week 6

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Not all Saturdays are created equal and this one clearly has more interesting games than most.

No.1 Mount Union and No. 4 Capital meet each other in a familiar situation with Mount Union as the favorite and Capital hoping to upset the Purple Powerhouse. These teams have had a handful of meetings with these same national rankings and none of the outcomes favor the Crusaders.

No. 17 Salisbury takes the field without several members of its starting defense against St. John Fisher who is without any margin for error if it has any chance at an at-large bid.

Elsewhere the only undefeated teams in the NJAC (Cortland-Montclair), SCIAC (Occidental-Redlands) and MIAC (Augsburg and Carleton) meet. No. 15 Case Western faces its toughest test in Wooster. Ditto for Wheaton (Ill.) against Augustana and Wabash against Wash U. Lycoming ‘s resurgent offense meets Albright, which struggled to score against FDU-Florham last week while Del Val hosts Leb Val.

Plenty to talk about, plenty to follow. Have at it and enjoy a great day of football.