Mitch Gallagher was held to 23 yards rushing but scored two touchdowns for St. Lawrence in its loss to Hobart. St. Lawrence athletics photo by Tara Freeman

As much as I’ve spent this season talking about ultra-elites and power conferences, Division III is packed with an exciting and amazing amount of parity across the nation.

And I don’t believe the parity exists because of a slide in the performance of teams that have traditionally been in the top fifth of the division. I think it is arising more from other teams following the examples of top teams, finding the coaches and the recruits that best fit in with each school’s academic and athletic philosophies and, lastly, stepping up to meet the new challenges.

Teams such as Hobart, Wheaton, Rowan and Hampden-Sydney are performing just as well as we’ve seen over the past decade, but their competition is getting stiffer. More than half of D-III has a conference leader that is undefeated in conference play, but look more closely at the scores those champs yielded to get to where they are. Even teams that are sub-.500 are being known to force top teams to take notice and not let their guards down.

Which leads me to the conference that has probably been most-covered in this space this season: the Empire 8. But there’s good reason to revisit them here, in what will be the final Snap Judgments column of the season (next weekend will be packed with more than enough Selection Sunday content to keep D-III fans happy). It was only a month ago when Ithaca suffered the first of two straight conference losses, the second one a surprising struggle against a now 4-5 Frostburg State.

The turnaround since then for the Bombers was epic – and completely in line with the kind of conference the E8 is. They held high-powered Salisbury and St. John Fisher offenses to single digits on the scoreboard and made the business of turnovers a lucrative one to be in. Currently sporting a 5-2 conference record, Ithaca has clinched a spot in the playoffs with the E8’s automatic bid.

That leaves Fisher also as 7-2 overall and almost certainly has people wondering whether, again, the Cardinals will be looked at favorably as a two-loss team and get a shot at the playoffs as an at-large Pool C selection. They were picked with that record last year and went on to represent the conference in the regional finals.

Parity is emerging elsewhere, of course. Guilford and St. Lawrence weren’t much to speak of a couple of seasons ago, but this week the Quakers pushed Hampden-Sydney into overtime and St. Lawrence held the lead three times against No. 7 Hobart. GC and SLU both lost, but the fact that, this deep into the season they could be a legitimate threat for the conference crown points to how so many teams are rising to the occasion on game day. As profiled in my Around the Nation column this past week, MIT’s pieces are coming together, and this program that’s turned things around just earned itself at least one extra week to the season.

It’s hard to talk about this weekend without pointing out the upsets that dotted the Top 25 (Ithaca’s win among them).

Pacific should be one of those teams that everyone is talking about now – because the Boxers have earned it. People marveled last season when the 2010 startup finished with a 7-3 season. This year, they’ve already knocked then-No. 18 Pacific Lutheran out of the poll, and beating No. 25 Willamette this week surely knocked the Bearcats out, too. Next week is the de facto NWC title tilt against Linfield. Pacific would have probably been getting Top 25 votes before this week if it weren’t for a baffling Week 3 loss to Dubuque. I would be surprised not to see the Boxers on a few ballots when the poll comes out tonight.

Pacific clinched a share of the Northwest Conference title with Saturday's win vs. Willamette. Pacific athletics photo by Jaime Valdez

Two top 25 teams lost to teams that were positioned just a little deeper in the poll: No. 14 Wittenberg got a playoff spot by beating NCAC rival No. 9 Wabash; and No. 18 St. John’s reasserted its MIAC dominance with a win over No. 10 Bethel. The Johnnies will get the conference’s Pool A bid with a win next week against 1-8 St. Olaf.

The question for Wabash and Bethel, which will likely remain ranked after these losses, is whether the NCAA committees will see them as candidates for at-large spots. Wabash, which still has its century-old rivalry game against DePauw next week, was denied a playoff spot in 2013 despite being 9-1. What’s changed this year, though, is that the Little Giants scheduled an impressive nonconference game (which the LGs won) against Hampden-Sydney.

Lastly, Morrisville State’s win over No. 23 Montclair State rattled the NJAC cage significantly, creating a three-way tie at the top and leaving an edge-of-your-seat game day next Saturday.

Postseason

If you don’t normally click on the national roundup stories that are posted on the front page on Saturday nights, this is the week to start. There’s both a Top 25 roundup and a rest-of-the-country roundup. Both have breakout information detailing which teams have already clinched bids to the playoffs thanks to their conference’s automatic qualifiers.

Also, if you’ve just read this column and still don’t know what I mean when I talk about Pool A, B or C bids, then read over the playoff FAQ. It’s one-stop shopping for terminology and the mess of criteria the regional committees uses to pare down the field of potential playoff teams.

This week has certainly shaken the discussion of at-large playoff bids, and there’s still one week left to see where Wabash, North Central, Bethel, UW-Platteville and many others will end up. The D3football.com message boards have a detailed and insightful thread dedicated to Pool C and which teams are shaping up to be first among them. Of course, there’s still one more week of regular-season football to play, but we’ll get a good picture of what’s on the committees’ minds when the next regional rankings are released on Wednesday.