ATN podcast: All playoff scenarios

We are down to our last “next week” for the 2008 season, with nine automatic bids yet to be handed out and, of course, all the at-larges.

In our weekly podcast, Keith McMillan and I run down the various scenarios in each AQ conference, plus look at the slightly muddier Pool B and Pool C pictures for at-large bids.

The playoffs are coming. D3football.com will take you there.

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.

Pool B increased to three

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.