Tag Archives: playoffs

Playoff primer: Pool B, Pool C

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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. 18, 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 six 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@d3sports.com and/or post below in the comments section.

Playoff primer: What are these pools?

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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.

Tiers of a crown

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As Keith McMillan touched on his 2008 season review, I have a theory that tries to make sense of who beats whom during the Division III football season. Instead of thinking about the landscape in terms of regions or conferences, I break it into three tiers.

• Tier I are the elite teams who are likely to finish as national champion. This is a very small group.

• Tier II has great teams who will have great seasons. They will likely win their conference and usually go a couple rounds in the playoffs. But, unless everything breaks for them, they will not win a national championship.

Come playoff time, one or two Tier IIs will be upset by a Tier III. Most Tier IIs will knock each other off in the early playoff rounds or lose to a Tier I, often by 14+ points. If a Tier II team plays a tremendous game and Tier I team plays poorly, an upset is possible.

• Tier III teams are everyone else who makes the playoffs or just misses it. They are good teams and their accomplishments should not be diminished. But, unless they have a very favorable draw, they will be eliminated in the first two weeks of the playoffs. Tier III might beat Tier II if it plays a tremendous game, but the same Tier III is highly unlikely to do that twice in the same postseason. And they definitely don’t beat Tier I.

So why bring this up before teams even break training camp? Why worry think about the playoffs at all when there are hundreds of good stories to follow between now and the Stagg Bowl on December 19? Because the fun of this theory lies in predicting which teams go in which tiers and that changes every year, particularly for Tiers II and III. And that, like the Top 25 Poll released today, is a matter of debate.

Based on my preseason ballot, I’d break them down like this.

• Tier I: Mount Union, UW-Whitewater

Recent seasons make it easy to slot the Purple Raiders and Warhawks here and they stand alone.

• Tier II: Mary Hardin-Baylor, UW-Stevens Point, Hardin-Simmons

These teams could beat a Tier I if they play great and the Tier I stumbles. That’s what separates them from the teams in Tier III who aren’t beating Mount Union or UW-Whitewater. UW-Stevens Point is an easy choice since they return a lot from the team that beat UW-Whitewater last year. Mary Hardin-Baylor hasn’t gotten over the Warhawk hump, but they’ve been competitive. Since the games between teams at this level should be competitive, Hardin-Simmons gets the nod.

A couple more teams will rise to this level, like Wheaton, Wartburg and Willamette did last year. But the first two lose a lot on defense and the third a lot on offense. And if you ask me which teams could upset the two purple powerhouses — and that’s a requirement to be in this tier — right now it’s three’s company.

• Tier III: Everyone else in the Top 25 or receiving votes

This does not mean every other team will have the same level of success. And there will be some wonderful stories at this level that will help define the season ahead. But this is how I see the landscape now.

You know, given all the games that have been played. 🙂