The NCAA has overturned its original decision to ban Eastern Washington University’s football team from postseason play, clearing the way for the Eagles to play in the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs, should they qualify.

EWU athletic director Bill Chaves confirmed the NCAA’s verdict on Tuesday, adding that the NCAA’s mandated three-year probationary period and the university’s self-imposed penalties that resulted from a series of infractions that occurred from 2003-07 under former head coach Paul Wulff remain in effect.

The Eagles, who are 5-3 overall and 4-2 in the Big Sky Conference, will travel to Seattle this weekend to take on league rival Portland State (2-6, 1-4) at Qwest Field, perhaps, with a new sense of urgency.

Tuesday’s announcement eliminates the cloud of uncertainty that has dogged the football program since the school formally appealed the NCAA’s postseason ban in February. At that time, the ban, and any effect it might have on Eastern’s eligibility to win the Big Sky Conference championship, was stayed.

“So, technically, we’ve been eligible for the playoffs and the Big Sky title from the second we kicked off the season,” Chaves said. “We had an understanding, of course, that at some stage the decision (on the appeal) would take place and we’d find out then if we were still eligible.”

With the verdict being what it was, Chaves is elated for everyone involved in the football program, but most of all the seniors on this year’s team who have dealt so admirably with distinct possibility of the postseason ban being upheld.

“At this stage, we’re 5-3 and still have plenty of work to do on the field,” Chaves explained. “But we’ve seen teams at 8-3 get in, so, should we be fortunate enough to win that many games, this certainly gives our players — and especially our seniors — something to shoot at.

”The leadership of that senior group has been nothing short of remarkable throughout this whole process.“

J.C. Sherritt, a junior linebacker and one of the Eagles’ captains, said head coach Beau Baldwin met with the captains and seniors on this year’s team, early Tuesday morning to relay the good news.

”We were definitely happy,“ Sherritt added, ”but Coach Baldwin did a good job of explaining to us that it really doesn’t matter if we lose another game. And I think we’ve had a really good attitude this whole year of approaching every game in the same way, playoff ban or not.“

That attitude, according to Sherritt, was never more noticeable than during last Saturday’s 35-24 comeback win over Montana State.

”That game really epitomized our approach,“ he explained, ”especially coming off that (41-34) loss to Montana, being down 10 points in the fourth quarter and coming back to win the game. I think that proved this team has never been worried about whether the ban was going to get lifted, or about anything else that’s not in our control.

“We’ve been good about keeping it week to week.”

Eastern still trails Montana (4-0), Weber State (5-1) and Northern Arizona (4-1) in the Big Sky standings, but had not yet been eliminated from the title race. The Eagles have already lost to Montana and Weber State — who play on Saturday in Missoula — but close the regular season with a Nov. 21 road game against Northern Arizona that could go a long way in determining their postseason fate.

Eastern last made the FCS playoffs in 2007 when they received an at-large berth and advanced to the quarterfinals before losing to eventual national champion Appalachian State.

The university first self-reported the violations that took place in its football program to the NCAA in February of 2007 and then self-imposed several penalties, most of which directly impacted the areas of the program that had been found complicit.

Among those were a three-year cutback in scholarship equivalencies from the NCAA limit of 63 to 61 and the elimination of one coaching position. In addition, the university agreed to limit the football program’s recruitment of known academic non-qualifiers for that same three-year period.

The NCAA, following its own two-year investigation, subsequently determined that the sheer number of violations — all of which were considered minor — was enough to qualify as a major infraction that warranted three years of probation and a one-year ban on postseason during the 2009 season.

Following that verdict, EWU announced plans to appeal just the postseason ban penalty, which it formally did back at the NCAA’s headquarters in Indianapolis in February. The university had been awaiting word on its appeal ever since.

Chaves admitted, although he felt the university had submitted a strong case for lifting the postseason ban, he had no idea what to expect. But he seemed convinced that the degree to which the infractions impacted EWU’s competitive advantage played a huge role in the NCAA’s verdict.

“The entire case we presented probably helped in some way, shape or form,” Chaves aid, “but, ultimately, I think it came down to one specific topic of conversation — substantial competitive advantage. We spent a very long time with both the committee of infractions and the appeals committee discussing whether the violations constituted a significant competitive advantage.

”And the way it kind of played itself out, one of those bodies obviously thought they did, and the other didn’t.“

Wulff, who left EWU following the Eagles’ 2007 playoff run to take the head coaching job at Washington State, has claimed all along that none of the infractions that occurred under watch were intentional or resulted in any kind of significant competitive advantage.

And he concurred with the NCAA’s decision on Tuesday, calling it ”the right thing,“ while reiterating his belief that the postseason penalty was not warranted in the first place.

”So, I think this brings things back to where it all should have been from Day One,“ he added.