Wheaton should be a fan of its placement in the bracket, as one of the four top seeds in this year's playoffs.

Photo by Matthew McClure, d3photography.com



Top seeds: Mary Hardin-Baylor, Mount Union, Salisbury and Wheaton. At-large teams: Redlands, Wartburg, UW-Whitewater, North Central and Wesley.

We love it when a plan comes together, when we agree with the committee on who should be in the playoffs and how they are seeded. That means that the differences are in small details, but most importantly, it means the playoff selection process is able to be understood and replicated by people outside the committee who follow the criteria.

Left out: John Carroll and Susquehanna. As the two viable one-loss candidates who were not selected, they face the most disappointment on Sunday. In the selection show, committee chair Jim Catanzaro specifically cited wins against regionally ranked teams as key in selecting the five at-large teams.

"The Whitewater-Oshkosh result last night definitely created some havoc in our putting together the bracket and the at-large bids," Catanzaro told D3football.com, "but there were some incredible strength of schedule numbers that were out there, and everybody was pretty comparable in regionally ranked wins. The strength of schedule numbers and evaluation of the results of regionally ranked opponents ... were the two big things that made the decisions."

Redlands, which is likely to be one of the top four teams in the West Region when the final regional rankings are released, does not get a home game, and gets shipped out to play the defending national champion, Mary Hardin-Baylor.

"It was not the original proposal," said Catanzaro. "I can tell that we really wanted to have Redlands host a game out there this year. ... We tried, and that was a no-go with the NCAA."

You can hear our full conversation with Catanzaro on the latest edition of the D3football.com Around the Nation Podcast.

Questions? Hit the comments at the bottom of this page.