The Division II Baseball Committee took steps to clarify its championship selection process for at-large berths into the NCAA tournament.

Rather than relying on primary and secondary criteria, the committee is recommending a more substantive approach to the Division II Championships Committee.

The recommendation calls for the committee to still focus on the existing criteria but not in priority order, thus giving what the committee believes to be a more flexible and accurate approach to selecting the most deserving teams.

The criteria include Division II strength of schedule; results against Division II teams with records of .500 or above; head-to-head games (with a minimum of two contests); in-region results; overall record; nonconference results; road results; and results against common opponents. The committee may also look at conference finish, regular-season conference standings and conference tournament results.

The committee emphasized that no one criterion carries more weight than another.

Committee members, who met July 5-8 in Boston, believe the new approach will allow for more debate on which teams should be in the field and make the process less reliant on raw numbers.

"We think this is a step that will allow our group more discussion," said committee Chair Britt Bonneau. "We want our committee to study each team so we can do our best to make at-large selections."

In years past, after placing automatic qualifiers, committee members felt they were hampered by comparing criteria, which members referred to as "boxes." For example, if two teams were being compared and one team had the edge in more boxes than another team, the former team was given the edge.

Since the criteria wouldn’t be viewed in priority order under the proposed system, committee members believe a debate over which areas are most important when comparing two teams would be a fairer way than plugging in numbers.

The hope is that more regional committee members will be able to see teams and then voice their opinion on their impressions of a team.

"We’re not making the committee use the criteria in priority order," said Bonneau, the coach at Abilene Christian University.

In addition to the discussion about selections, the committee also developed criteria for umpires who are chosen to work regionals and at the final site.

Committee members agreed that umpires must have worked at least six Division II contests; a minimum of 25 NCAA games; have attended an NCAA regional clinic every other year or have viewed a DVD of a clinic; must have correctly answered at least 80 percent of the questions on the NCAA Baseball Rules Test; and have a minimum of five years of experience umpiring college baseball.

The committee also sent regional and finals-site recommendations for the 2008, 2009 and 2010 championships to the Division II Championships Committee for consideration.