Carnegie Mellon coach Rich Lackner and his players huddled in an apartment on campus that received ESPN News, put down their pizza and stopped talking when the pairings for the NCAA Division III football playoffs flashed on the television screen.

	District College Football Playoff teams NCAA DIVISION III First round (Noon Saturday). Millsaps (Miss.) College (7-3) at Carnegie Mellon (10-0). Washington & Jefferson (9-1) at Christopher Newport, Va. (8-2).

Name by name were scrolled until Carnegie Mellon finally appeared.

"We all started cheering," Lackner said. "When you're leaving it up to a committee choosing you, there were a little bit of butterflies until we saw our name pop up."

CMU (10-0), which received an at-large bid, will make its first appearance in the playoffs since 1990 when it plays host to Millsaps (Miss.) College (7-3) in the first round at noon Saturday at Gesling Stadium.

Washington & Jefferson (9-1) also received an at-large bid and will play Christopher Newport (8-2) in Christopher Newport, Va., in a first-round game Saturday. Christopher Newport, coming off a 55-7 victory against Ferrum, earned an automatic bid as USA South's champion.

W&J and Christopher Newport have met twice previously, both times in the playoffs, with W&J winning 24-10 in 2002 and 24-14 in 2004.

CMU, champion of the University Athletic Association, and W&J, champion of the Presidents' Athletic Conference, got at-large bids because their conferences don't have the necessary seven teams to qualify its champion for an automatic bid.

"Playing at home means something and is a just reward for our players," Lackner said. "It's great for Pittsburgh, it's great for our players and it's great for Carnegie Mellon."

CMU's offense features a punishing running attack that averages 272 yards per game, led by Travis Sivek's 1,172 yards and 12 touchdowns and Robert Gimson's 862 yards and 10 touchdowns. Millsaps, in the playoffs for the first time since 1975, defeated Trinity, 34-12, to clinch the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference championship. The win ended Trinity's 13-year streak atop the conference.

Millsaps has won seven in a row after starting the season with three losses.

Millsaps, whose coach, Mike DuBose, was the coach at the University of Alabama in the late 1990s, relies on a passing game led by Juan Joseph (2,265 yards, 21 touchdowns) and Chris Jackson (59 catches, 661 yards, 9 touchdowns). Jackson had punt returns of 67 and 51 yards for touchdowns and a 5-yard touchdown catch against Trinity.

As expected, the district doesn't have a team in the NCAA Division II playoffs as Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference West co-champions IUP (8-2) and California (8-3) were bypassed.