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| North Central fans could find themselves looking for an explanation of their regional ranking. Read on. Photo by Matthew McClure, d3photography.com |
The first official regional rankings won't arrive from the NCAA until Nov. 6. But we also know you don't want to wait that long to get a look at the rankings the NCAA football championship committee will eventually use to select at-large teams and pair them up.
So we have created a mock regional ranking. This is not guaranteed to be a reflection of the way the committee would rank teams if they were released today, but Greg Thomas, D3football.com's bracketology guru, took the results, took the strength of schedule numbers and applied the NCAA's criteria to come up with these rankings, in consultation with other experts and NCAA committee watchers.
Regional rankings primarily take Division III games into account.
Teams are listed with their Division III record only. For more information about the playoff format and how participants are determined, check out our FAQ, or listen to the podcast linked below.
A plus sign signifies that the team also has a non-Division III win, while a minus sign signifies a non-Division III loss. Teams in bold have clinched automatic bids. The numbers listed are a team's Division III record, their D-III strength of schedule, and their record against regionally ranked teams. (The committee will dive even further into that and consider the specifics of a team's results against regionally ranked opponents, or RROs.)
| East Region | Notes |
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The Sea Gulls, for now, have an advantage in the East but Ithaca and Cortland have not just the Cortaca Jug game, but also games this week against teams we also have ranked here; Union and Brockport. Despite some close calls, Wesley has built a pretty complete Pool C profile with a high SOS, multiple RRO wins, and zero losses to unranked teams. Western New England and Endicott also square off this weekend in another game of mock-ranked teams. |
| North Region | Notes |
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Hope currently grades out very well with two regionally ranked wins and a strong SOS. The Hope/North Central twosome may flip pending North Central’s game with common opponent Millikin. The bottom of these rankings are a bit messy. Denison, OWU, Mount St. Joseph, and Hanover all have 6-1 records. All but Denison currently have SOS’s that we feel are disqualifying. Wabash has an SOS and h2h advantage over Denison, which is why we have the Big Red just out and Wabash just in. Baldwin Wallace and John Carroll play in Week 11 in what might be a play-in game, but certainly is an elimination game for the loser. |
| South Region | Notes |
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The most influential team in these rankings might the one that’s missing: Johns Hopkins. Hopkins just missing our rankings takes an RRO win from Susquehanna, which we believe keeps them behind TLU as well as taking an RRO result away from Randolph-Macon, which we believe keeps the Yellow Jackets behind Hardin-Simmons. Undefeated CWRU and Bridgewater have no results against ranked teams and relatively weak SOS’s, which prevents them from being higher in the rankings. The SAA creates a conundrum with their mixed bag of head-to-head results, but at the moment Hendrix’s head-to-head win vs. Birmingham-Southern, as well as superior SOS and win over South No. 3 TLU just sneaks them in. |
| West Region | Notes |
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We expect the St. John’s/UW-W rankings to be extremely close through the end of the season, possibly with a No. 1 seed at stake. Through Week 8, The Johnnies have criteria advantages with SOS and RRO’s. Strength of remaining schedule heavily favors the Warhawks, so this is definitely fluid. Redlands has the best SOS in the division and will continue to be buoyed by their win over surging Linfield. We evaluated three teams for the last spot: Gustavus Adolphus, UW-Oshkosh and Puget Sound. Despite a sizeable SOS gap, we preferred GAC’s results against West Nos. 1 and 7 to Oshkosh’s results vs. East No. 1 and West No. 9 and certainly to UPS’s pair of blowout losses to ranked teams. One-loss teams lingering on the fringe of these rankings include Central, Martin Luther, and Lake Forest, but the West’s rankings are really hard to crack with the SOS’s that this group has. |
How to use regional rankings: If you are an at-large candidate, you want to be sure you are the top at-large candidate in your region. That will ensure you get discussed by the national committee and have a chance to be put in the field.
There are 27 automatic bids, zero Pool B bid (teams not in the 27 automatic bid conferences) and five Pool C (true national at-large) bids. Selection Sunday is Nov. 17.