It’s that time of year again. The time of year when the push for the Division II football playoffs begins.
The first edition of the 2008 region rankings was released by the Division II Football Committee on Monday. The new rankings will be released every Monday from now until the rest of the season.
The region rankings is the poll that decides which 24 teams will participate in the Division II playoffs.
There are four super regionals that divide teams and conferences based on location around the country. The top six teams in each super regional at the end of the year will qualify for the playoffs.
Super regional two covers the Southeast, which includes Valdosta State, the rest of the Gulf South Conference, the South Atlantic Conference (SAC) and the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC).
The Blazers (4-1) are currently No. 3 in super regional two. Delta State (5-0) is No. 1, Wingate (6-0) is No. 2, North Alabama (6-0) is No. 4, Tusculum (4-2) is No. 5 and Newberry (3-2) is No. 6.
Arkansas Tech (3-2), Arkansas-Monticello (4-2), Benedict (3-3) and Albany State (4-1) round out the top 10.
At the end of the season, the top two teams in each region get a bye week, while No. 6 plays at No. 3 and No. 5 plays at No. 4 in the first round.
If the season ended today, No. 3 VSU would host No. 6 Newberry at home in the first round, and if VSU won, it would play at No. 2 Wingate the following week.
“I was really expecting us to be about No. 4 or No. 5, to be honest,”
VSU head coach David Dean said. “We’ll take No. 3, but it doesn’t matter where you are now. It matters where you are in November.”
With North Alabama having VSU and Delta State remaining on the schedule and Wingate having to play Carson-Newman, Newberry and Catawba in consecutive weeks, it’s way too early to pencil in playoff matchups. And, of course, there remains the dreaded earned access rule.
Earned access states that if a conference without a team in the top six at the end of the year has a team ranked seventh or eighth, that team will bump the No. 6 team out of the playoffs and go in its place.
In 2006, Albany State finished eighth in the region at the end of the season and bumped No. 6 Wingate from the playoffs. VSU was No. 6 going into the final rankings, and many believe that Wingate jumped to No. 6 so that Albany State didn’t bump out VSU, which had beaten Albany State earlier in the season. Instead, VSU moved down to No. 7 after winning a game and it was Wingate who was bumped. Either way, Albany State made the playoffs and the Blazers didn’t, even though the Blazers finished with a better record than Albany State and beat them head-to-head.
“We’re always worried about earned access,”
Dean said. “But that’s something that’s out of our hands, and as long as we control what we do, that’s all we can ask for.”
Although major Division II programs like VSU fear earned access, it is less likely to come into play this year. The CIAA conference moved from VSU’s region to super regional one (northeast) in the offseason, leaving just the GSC, SAC and SIAC to fight for the six playoff spots.
Blazers ranked No. 3 in first region rankings
