The Blue Streaks don't even get onto the board in our projection of the Division III at-large selection process, so how can they get into the field? John Carroll athletics photo

By Greg Thomas and Pat Coleman
D3sports.com

Of course, it isn't possible to completely project a playoff bracket before we know all of the automatic bids. But we're in a pretty good place where we do know 21 of them, a handful of others have their destiny in their own hands, and one or two won't matter much for seeding purposes. But if UW-Oshkosh should beat UW-Whitewater on Saturday night, or if Central should lose and give Wartburg the automatic bid, there will obviously be some major differences. 

All we can do is project as much as needed, and so we projected Berry to win the SAA, Central to hold on in the ARC, Huntingdon in the USA South, Monmouth to win the MWC title game and UW-Whitewater to win the WIAC. The NEWMAC has three possible winners, but all are unranked in the regional poll and there is not much difference in terms of geography.

• The selection show streams online (we will have a link on D3football.com) at 5:30 p.m. ET Sunday.

Once we have projected the remaining automatic qualifiers, we then have five at-large bids to hand out. Those five bids, known as Pool C, are true at-larges that any team can receive. The committee traditionally will sit down with a board that includes the top at-large team from each regional ranking, comparing the four teams head-to-head, then select one to put in the field. The committee considers the usual criteria: results vs. Division III teams, strength of schedule, results vs. regionally ranked teams, head-to-head results and results vs. common opponents. As we get closer to the end of the process, though, the committee can consider non-Division III games as well. And with just five spots and more than twice as many candidates, expect every piece of data possible to be used.

There is no Pool B bid this year, and no Pool B-eligible teams.

Here's how the at-large mock selection process goes:

First to the board are Wesley, North Central, Susquehanna, and Redlands. Wesley has two RRO wins and what should wind up as the best SOS of this group. The Wolverines haven’t been the most dominant team on this list, but their at-large profile is undeniable.

Cortland takes Wesley’s spot at the table and with a sub-.500 SOS and just 0-1 vs. ranked opponents, are not a great candidate at this point. Redlands SOS is going to dip quite a bit after their game with Occidental, but it’s still going to be the top SOS on the board. The Bulldogs are also the only team here with a win against a ranked opponent (Linfield) and their lone loss is also to a ranked team (West No. 2 Chapman). Redlands goes in.

Wartburg steps up now and the Knights should have the top SOS of the current group as well as the only win against a ranked team in the group (Monmouth). They also have a narrow loss to a ranked team -- basically, Wartburg presents a résumé which is almost identical to Redlands and the Knights are our third selection.

Bethel is the West’s third at-large team and they come to the table. Bethel is 0-1 against ranked opponents and they do get an SOS boost from St. Thomas. With four teams that do not have a win against a ranked opponent, we have to dig deeper. SOS’s are going to be fairly tight between North Central, Bethel, and Susquehanna when all of the results are in. Bethel’s 19-0 loss to West No. 4 is the worst loss of these three. Susquehanna lost in OT to South No. 2 while North Central lost 35-21 to North No. 2 in a game that was tied going to the fourth quarter. The differences here are getting very fine, but our choice for the fourth bid will be Susquehanna.

Randolph-Macon comes to the board and with two losses, they will be a nonfactor at this stage. The final choice comes down to North Central and Bethel and the major criteria-based difference between these two appears to be the nature of their ranked loss. North Central has a better result against a higher ranked team and the Cardinals will be our fifth and final selection.

Now to the bracketing. 

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It seems reasonable at this point to give Salisbury the top seed in a bracket of easternmost schools. But we do have two Centennial teams in this bracket, including Muhlenberg as the No. 2 seed, so there is no guarantee an East Region team gets out of that bracket. Two East teams are in the top right bracket as well.

You can read the top seed as the team on the top line in each of the four groups of eight. They face the winner of the 4-5 game (although seeds don't hold because of geography in the top left bracket). Chapman, Muhlenberg, Wesley and Wheaton are the two seeds, and the home team in the matchup directly below them is the three seed in each bracket.

We tried very hard to get a bracket that had the following: Huntingdon at UMHB, Berry at Redlands and Linfield at Chapman, but that left us without enough teams that could host in the middle of the country, so we took two of our midwest lower seeds and flew them out instead: Monmouth and Wabash. As the lower of the two seeds, we sent Monmouth to UMHB, but the roles could easily reverse.

Without an at-large team from the OAC, or a host team from the NCAC, we actually have some restrictions in how we can bracket this. Bracketing is easier when there is someone like Wittenberg or John Carroll who can host, or both. Hope, being tucked up around Lake Michigan, can't have as many teams head its way and still get there within 500 miles. But we do like the Dutch-Dutchmen game in the upper right bracket. Union and Susquehanna, in a world where playoff teams were more evenly spread, would both get to host first-round games. And no, we wouldn't want to have Wheaton and North Central potentially meeting in the second round, but the options were to instead have one of them face Whitewater or Mount Union in the second round, and that would not be better.

We will go through this process again on Saturday night, once all the games are played.